


Songs for the road

by BlueMonkey



Series: Songs For The Road [1]
Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Book Spoilers, F/M, Fix-it fic, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Sexual Tension, Sibling Incest, UST, clueless dwarves, major feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 08:58:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 45,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMonkey/pseuds/BlueMonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Fíli and Kíli's brotherly closeness is really pushing the concept of 'brotherly'. Or at least that's what just about everyone - themselves excluded - believes.</p><p>But then it all spirals out of control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"A fox and three hares. There you go."

Kíli tossed the three smaller game on the table and pointed at the dead fox on the ground. He grinned triumphantly. "Beat that, brother."

Fíli raised an eyebrow. He sat back and looked around himself without a care in the world, a pipe in his hand. In the background, in the middle of the clearing where they were camped for the night, Bombur was heard giving a cheer, and Dwalin and Óin muttering content praises. 

"A buck!" called out Bombur, "Blessed be Aulë! It's a feast!"

Kíli's smile fell.

"Looks like I in fact did beat you," Fíli's hand fluttered like he wanted to pat himself on the shoulder. Opposite him, his brother gaped, closed his mouth, and then angrily stomped his feet into the dry forest soil scattered with autumn leaves beneath him. 

"You cheated. You must have cheated! A buck, Fíli, with a sword?! That thing was probably already dead when you found it!"

Fíli shrugged. "I can be quiet when I want to be. It didn't know what hit him until it did. Fair is fair, brother. A bet's a bet. Hand it over."

Kíli huffed. "Come and take it."

Fíli shrugged his shoulders, amusement apparent. "Don't mind if I do."

"There we go again," Ori muttered to Dori, while Fíli got up from where he was seated, smothered the fire of his pipe and strode to Kíli's bedroll. Kíli latched onto his back and whined, "It's not fair!"

"Oh, yes it is," said Fíli and continued on like the weight of his brother was nothing. Like the consistent pounding of a fist against his shoulder and back were but pats. "You decided the terms yourself. Don't be such a sore loser."

"What is going on?" came Thorin's gruff voice.

Ori cringed, and Dori looked on with too much curiosity.

Fíli and Kíli halted.

"Kíli lost a wager. His bedroll's mine for the night."

"Only because you cheated!"

"Did you?" asked Thorin.

"No."

Kíli huffed. He kept quiet and looked down.

"Kíli, off your brother's back. How old are you now?"

"... Too old for this, uncle."

"I thought so."

With that, Thorin nodded. He turned to leave, but then stopped and turned once again to tell Fíli with something akin to pride, "Excellent work on the buck, by the way."

"And the fox and the hares," Kíli quietly tried.

"And those," Thorin said. "Now if only you could hunt without turning it into a competition like you two do with everything, we could enjoy the meal to the best of our extent as well."

"Apologies, uncle," Fíli and Kíli spoke in unison. That seemed to do it. Thorin nodded, pleased, and left for the campfire and the wizard waiting patiently there. Gandalf leaned on his staff. If the knowing smile on his lips were directed and Fíli and Kíli, well, then they kept quiet and returned him just a small obnoxious one behind their uncle's back and it would be their little secret henceforth.

Kíli refrained from commenting when Fíli took his bedroll and dragged it on top of his own. Two bedrolls was a luxury if any, on the rocky ground where protruding branches and cobbles could turn a good night's rest into a nightly hell, even on a single bedroll. For Kíli, it was going to be a long night indeed.

He sat down next to Fíli while the elder arranged his now royal sleeping accommodations. "How about another wager?" he said. "You know, settle the score. You can't seriously want me to sleep on the ground, do you?"

"You would have been content to have me sleep on the floor if you won," Fíli returned.

Kíli shrugged and nodded in admittance, a grin plastered on his face. "But your back is used to a lot more. You would have done fine. Mine is delicate."

The laughter that rung from Fíli at that, turned the heads of several dwarves.

"-'s the matter?" asked Dwalin.

"Kíli says he has a delicate backside."

Dwalin chortled. "I bet he has."

Only then did Kíli understand how his brother had read his words. He'd be damned if he lost to his brother once again though, so he straightened his back, punched his brother in the shoulder for good measure, and piped up, "I do. You wouldn't know, with your calluses and welts."

"Oooh," crooned Dwalin, "The boy has you there."

Fíli looked up, unimpressed. "The only reason 'the boy' says so, is because he wants me to prove him wrong. I'm not undressing for that."

"Pity," Kíli picked at a loose scab on his leather boots, "There's such a nice evening chill. It would be good for you. Cool you down. Get some sense back into you."

"Dwalin," called Ori over, "Are you sure you want to be part of that particular conversation?"

Dwalin thought about that, but didn't budge. "Nah, I'm not too worried I am actually part of it," he called back.

True enough, Fíli was already firing his own sharp remark back at Fíli.

"I believe you're the one who's heated up here, brother."

"Oh, I wish I was. It would make sleeping on the floor without a blanket tonight a lot easier. You're heartless."

"That pains my heart," the elder clutched at his chest mockingly.

"You have none." Kíli pouted. He was on the losing side and he knew it. His meagre comeback was weak enough to topple with a single well-aimed blow.

"Then why would I have to cool down if there is no pulse within me to heat me up?"

And so Fíli toppled it. Dwalin laughed heartily at that, while Ori and Dori from their distance groaned and, likewise, did Kíli. "Fine," he said, "I will extract myself from this conversation to keep at least some of my dignity."

"Dignity, brother?" Fíli sat back, "What is that strange thing you speak of?"

The thump on his already bruising shoulder made him wince, before Kíli pounced on him and pushed him over.

Ori and Dori stiffened when the leader of their company sat down next to them on the log. Ori mutely offered him his pipe. Thorin ignored it. He sighed. "What am I to do with them?" he said, "They never listen. Brothers."

Ori opened his mouth to speak up, but Dori jabbed him quickly before he could. "Ow!" cried out Ori, to which his brother instantly glared at him. "What'd you do that for?!"

Thorin frowned at them. He took a drag from the pipe and offered it back, before getting up again.

There was no point telling him that what they were looking at had nothing to do with being brothers, and everything with them being Fíli and Kíli.

*****

"... What? Who?"

"Hush," came the hissing reply.

"Kíli?"

It was pitch dark outside. With the new moon in the sky, the stars gave off too little light for anyone to be recognisable, and the fire was too far away to give any decent light as well - obscured as it was behind the rock where Fíli had put his two comfortable bedrolls. "What are you doing?"

"You may have my bedroll for the night, but nobody said anything about not being able to sleep on you."

"... Kíli, get off of me."

"No."

Kíli rearranged himself stubbornly, jostling himself flat on top of Fíli. When his brother put his hands firmly on his waist to dislodge him, he whined.

"Come on, please. I can't sleep like this, Fíli. I really tired."

"Could you be quiet? Some of us are trying to sleep here." Gloin.

"Sorry," Kíli had the decency to reply. "Fíli, please..."

The blond was really too tired for this. His hands pulled Kíli off him, to much complaining and pleading noises - and groans from, surprisingly, more dwarves than Gloin alone - and rolled onto his side.

Kíli squirmed into the space left and quieted.

Fíli at last allowed his eyes to when it seemed like the squirming and meddling with his sleep had stopped, and replaced with a steady rhythmic breathing.

"You're the best brother," he thought he could hear whispered quietly enough for only him to hear.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As opposed to just about everyone else in the company, Kíli actually likes the rain.

While entering the Shire had been an affair of sunshine, laughter and the sense of adventure to the dwarves, leaving it was paired with grumbles. For past the sloping green hills lay the Old Forest, and under its roof of treetops it rained and rained until even Bilbo complained about forgetting his raincoat and how Myrtle's furs felt so icy cold that she too needed a break, it wasn't just him talking, it really wasn't.

If there was one person who did enjoy the rain, it had to be Kíli. The young dwarf practically beamed. He blew a clinging drop of water off his nose cheerfully, and to his great joy it took him less than a minute to form another one.

Balin eventually rode up to Fíli and spoke his concerns. "Are you sure you are related?"

"Positive," groaned Fíli, who didn't understand this obsession with rain either. As a kid Kíli used to be afraid of the sky waters. It was probably one of those phases that he tended to have. Like that one time he thought he could be a miner, long ago, and his helmet lights went out all of a sudden and he cried until someone found him. "At least on our mother's side. I saw with my own eyes."

"Hm, yes, that's undeniable, that is. He was born before his time though, Thorin said?"

Fíli smiled at their shared joke on behalf of the completely oblivious Kíli next to him. Balin retreated again, and he pulled his hood over his head a little further. His hands gripped the reins that bit tighter as if that would distract him.

When he looked back at his brother, he found him looking up with his tongue stuck out and his eyes jammed shut. Catching drops.

"Even the rain tastes different here!" Kíli exclaimed in astonishment.

It wasn't very far beyond what he expected when that night, after the rain cleared, Kíli silently scuttled closer against Fíli next to the campfire and muttered, "Fíli? I don't feel so well."

 

*****

 

Fíli could ignore his brother on all days and all occasions. In fact, he had gotten rather good at it. Whenever the mood hit the younger to be a nuisance or too cheerful and Fíli just wasn't in the mood for it - it happened rarely, but there was really no stopping to Kíli once he started so it had become a household skill to Fíli very early on - he would shut himself off. In such situations he would nod at well-timed moments, wear a noncommittal smile and continue onward. The best part was that Kíli hardly ever realised.

Fíli did have one weakness though. He couldn't stand his brother looking sad or weak. And the heap that sat mounted on a pony next to him looked altogether pathetic. His red nose peeked out from the scarf that Gandalf had borrowed him. The sparkles were the only lively thing about Kíli, who otherwise tried to keep his eyes closed as much as he could and sat hunched over.

"Don't you think you're overdoing it a little?" Fíli asked insensitively, just because he didn't want to let anyone in on his concerns.

Kíli only looked at him with bleary eyes and confusion.

"My clothes are still wet," he frowned.

"They'll dry," said Fíli, "You should have hung them out to dry over the campfire like the rest yesterday."

"Yes. Why didn't you do that for me?"

There was no point arguing about the fact that Kíli had fallen asleep on him very early on, and both his dead weight as well as the way Fíli liked circling his hands around him and keeping him warm were the reasons why Kíli's clothes were currently still slightly wet. It's not like Fíli's clothes hadn't seen fit to be hung out either because of that - unlike the rest of the dwarves, who mentioned several times as they hung their own wardrobes out to dry that they were fools to stay like that.

"Try to get some rest," Fíli sighed and reassured his grip on Kíli's reins.

"I'm cold," Kíli complained instead. "Why won't you let me wrap myself in blankets and dry up?"

"And then happen upon that pack of orcs we heard? You'd be unprotected without your armour and your bow and quiver."

"I would have you," Kíli sniffed, "You'd keep me safe from those."

Fíli would. But that was not the point he was trying to make.

"Oh," Kíli looked up. A smile crossed his lips. "Fíli, look."

Sunlight started to filter through the thicket, its warm rays dabbling over the dwarves. The forest suddenly came alive with the reflection of raindrops all around them.

"Gandalf," Kíli called forward, "Is it you?"

The wizard only laughed and shook his head. "I'm afraid the sun does as the sun will, too, Kíli. Perhaps you should look around you. You might find something quite wonderful indeed."

Kíli did as he was told, but he wasn't the first one to spot tiny fragments of rainbows in the forest behind him. Not with twelve other dwarves of whom at least ten were curious enough to listen in. "Look," called Ori, "Over there!"

"And there!" Bofur pointed to a different area. "It's beautiful," mused he.

"Indeed it is," Balin chuckled.

The column of ponies and the present wonder alike came to an instant whinnying halt when something heavy crashed into the forest floor blanketed with wet red and yellow leaves, immediately followed by a panicked shout. "Halt!"

Thorin reined in his horse. He must have expected a minor disturbance, but his demeanour instantly changed when he saw his youngest nephew lying on the floor, moaning. Within a few strides he was near him and crouched down next to Fíli, who tried to get him to wake up. Kíli's eyelids flickered open and shut.

"What is wrong?" Thorin demanded.

"He is sick."

"... Gandalf assured me it was just a minor cold."

"That's what I thought too. He needs to rest. He must have wanted to look around and gotten dizzy." While Fíli's words were resolute, his tone wavered. He was worried, so worried. "I underestimated what he tried to say."

Thorin stood up. "We camp here!" he called out to the rest of the company at once. "Gandalf, a word."

A word with Gandalf proved to be less a berating and more an appeal to his aid. So why the wizard called over Bilbo and the hobbit followed him in tow was beyond both Fíli and Thorin, until Gandalf took a good look, frowned, and asked, "Well. What do you think?"

"What do you mean, 'what do you think'?" asked the dwarf prince, offended.

"I was talking to Bilbo."

Thorin's pride flared up further, but Fíli pressed a hand on his chest as if to say, uncle, please, hear him out. For the sake of Kíli.

Bilbo fidgeted while he stepped forward and looked at the fallen dwarf. The three - and behind him most of the other dwarves - looked at him expectantly. Thorin, admittedly, with some mild scepticism here and there. There were few things he would pause his company for. Kíli and Fíli were at the top of that very limited list. Bilbo's blundering had yet to earn a place on the bottom of it. Kíli himself only whimpered when the hobbit pressed a hand against his forehead.

"He's burning up. Is it-... oh, it's because of yesterday's rain, isn't it?"

Fíli nodded.

"Well. I suppose a draft of either elderberries, rosemary or peppermint. I do believe that should do to get rid of the fever. That, and a warm bed to help him sweat it out. Um." He frowned. "His clothes are still wet."

From where they were crouched next to Kíli, Thorin and Fíli stared at Bilbo, who fumbled under the attention and instead looked up at Gandalf expectantly. Gandalf returned him a proud smile and a nod that said, _well, off you go_. The hobbit immediately took his chance. "I'll go look for them," he offered.

"Thank you." Fíli smiled at the halfling before his worried gaze returned to Kíli.

"Ah. Don't mention it. My back was getting stiff from riding anyway." Maybe he should have refrained from that last sentence. The look that Thorin gave, who could not appreciate the jest in the slightest, sent Bilbo spinning around and immediately hobbling the other direction. On his way he was.

Fíli started unpacking his bedroll. He looked around for a comfortable patch of moss or grass, but in the end he settled for the spot right next to Kíli, not wanting to move him too much.

"Best get those clothes off him and dried." Balin had shuffled forward when they weren't paying attention. "I'll let you borrow my blanket, if you want."

"Aye, and mine," Dwalin broke in.

By the time the draft was prepared and poured into a soup bowl - it was the first thing on hand - the sun read midday and Kíli lay asleep on top of the bed of crispy leaves, the ground two bedrolls away and his warmth subjected to four blankets, with his clothes hanging out to dry. A sheen of cold sweat still covered his brows.

"Fíli," his uncle eventually spoke, "Balin will get him to drink some. We will need food tonight, and until the fever breaks we will not move." They had found themselves in a predicament, then. Kíli was by far the best hunter of the party - if only because he was the only one who knew how to properly handle a ranged weapon. Fíli was not too shabby himself, but he depended on luck or game that wouldn't flee at first sight. He doubted he'd find a boar in these parts of the world. The buck he took back to camp a few days ago had only been made possible under the cover of a drizzle and a weak wind that happened to carry in the fortunate direction.

It needn't be said that his uncle's words were a request rather than an explanation.

"But Kíli...," Fíli protested. He was reluctant to leave him.

"Will have twelve dwarves and an undersized grocer looking after him. Nor will I leave his side."

"Give me an hour. If he hasn't woken up by then, I'll go."

"That's an order."

 

*****

 

Fíli stomped a cobble out of his path. Hunting, yes, that's what he was supposed to be doing. Not scaring any chance at game away by walking around with an anger and bewilderment as large as his own. He'd seen a few mice scurry away earlier and pulled himself together for a moment, but every second that he didn't find anything was a second he could have spent elsewhere.

It was unfair of Thorin to send him away. If previous times were anything to go by, this was going to end up in a big heated discussion in which Fíli would accuse his uncle of heartlessness, Thorin would retort with an absolute command that gave him no space for anything other than more frustration, and in the end Kíli would have no choice but to intervene and try calming him down. Except Kíli was ill and wouldn't be able to, not this time.

Fíli sighed. He wasn't going to put the group through that. His eyes darted over the area. Maybe there was a forest lake nearby, and if he was lucky it would have some fish. Fish were easy enough.

His thoughts unwittingly went back to Kíli. Kíli, who had whimpered when Fíli had put a hand on his forehead to check his head. Something in his stomach clenched. The dwarf was well aware that it wasn't the worry that wrecked him this time. It was something else entirely, for he instinctively clenched his jaw and tried to push it away.

They'd not always been close. As kids Fíli often wanted to go out on his own, and Kíli would tag along. It was fine at first. Fíli could be the big brother and Kíli would learn from him. There were so many questions that Fíli couldn't ever hope to sate the younger's curiosity. It was fine for a while.

Eventually though, Fíli grew up and the small age gap began to feel larger and larger. He wanted to do things on his own. He wanted to make his own friends, put his own mark on the world, and he began to be interested in others. There was a smaller place for Kíli in that world. But Kíli continued to take more time from him than Fíli really wanted to spare him - while undoubtedly only because he looked up to his older brother - and it became smothering. Unbearable.

One night, Fíli had lashed out with words so vicious that young Kíli had run up to their shared room, locked it, and not come out for days.

Fíli, ashamed of himself when he saw what he had done, had taken up apprenticeship at a forge five days of travel away from their place, the next day. They did not see each other again for three years.

In a way it had been the best thing to happen to them. Fíli had been able to get the space he had wanted for so long. He learned who he was. He chased lasses, drank until morning and spent many a day with a pounding headache. He took up a trade and made many errors before he finally got something right. But he also learned it was an empty and lonely place without someone to share it with.

And Kíli, well, Kíli had finally been forced to find some things for his own. He had taken up hunting. Without the shadow of his brother to live in, he had started to cast one of his own. His fire shone bright in gatherings, where he'd tell big stories and got the most cheers.

As soon as Fíli set foot in his old home again and sat down on his old bed again, and Kíli sat down opposite him without a word, having been informed of his return, he had offered an apology for that which had happened many years ago that was accepted with a quiet grace.

Somehow, neither cast a shadow on the other from that point on, even though they both shone brightest when around each other.

But Kíli's changes had, Fíli reminisced, started to appeal to him in stranger ways not too long after.

He pushed his thoughts back with a shake; he had to find food.

There was no point in dwelling over what would not be.

 

*****

 

Kíli's fever broke early on the next morning.

When he woke up and, leaning his weight on one arm, looked around, all of the world was quiet. In the distance, just around the perimeter of camp, Bofur stood guard. He hadn't noticed.

A heavy arm was draped over his lap. He turned to look at it, then blinked as he found his uncle asleep next to him. Kíli squinted at the oddness of it - Thorin was fond of them, sure, but also stoic ever since Erebor was taken from him, so long ago now. He must have really been ill to make so big an impression then.

Kíli lay back down. He turned on his side and stretched out his hand in the dark. Fingers crept over cool leaves that crunched under the weight of his touch until they found what they were looking for, right off centre from where he expected it after years and years. He smiled and closed his eyes.

Morning found him holding hands with Fíli, and tucked close, protected in his slumber, against his uncle's chest. And blissfully, blissfully unaware of what the early risers muttered at the odd sight.


	3. Chapter 3

Dwarves were a simple people. They liked food, laughter and ale. Whichever method used to have it drafted, whichever exotic hints it bore interested them little, though their liquor was often appreciated when it was stronger rather than weaker.

So the elvish variants were little impressive to most of them - Gandalf, Bilbo and Dori the only ones to take a keen interest in the grape distils with tiny glasses and small sips. The others didn't understand. They needed kegs. Loads of them. Filled to the brim, if could be. The specially kept basement for visitors who preferred a bit more inebriation than the inhabitants of Rivendell found soothing themselves however... now that storage was agreed upon by all to contain an excellent campfire ale. Perfect to get drunk on.

Bifur and Bofur laughed as Bombur's seat gave in under his weight, and Balin promptly fell asleep with a red nose and cheeks, uttering something unintelligible. His pint was given considerably more attention, when it rolled over the floor and Dwalin ran after it to prevent it from spilling more fine ale. When it was finally stopped, only half of it was still in there. And then one large gulp downed that instantly, followed by laughter and a victorious outcry.

Some of the elves had joined the merry gathering, among them those who were not from Rivendell but further regions and also guests of the last homely house. They all made sure not to come too close to Thorin's side of the company though. The prince, drunk as he had gotten, had taken to calling out a number of profanities about their guests before being quieted by Gandalf and a particularly strong type of weed from his pipe.

He was currently docile, if a garbled song on the harp could be considered docile.

Fíli was just fine with his pipe the pint he shared with Kíli. He laughed when Glóin called out, "Ori! Don't be dull, have a drink with us! Now's the time to enjoy yourself!"

Ori in return pushed Glóin's drunk body over with a shove of his foot before continuing on whatever it was he was doing - reading, by the looks of it. "I'm enjoying myself plenty enough, thank you," he piped up.

"Here!" Kíli offered Glóin his pint to clink on that, which was heartily accepted.

Fíli was feeling generous. He'd been leaning against Kíli for the larger part of the night, and had at one point pulled Kíli flush against him. Kíli had squirmed and frowned until he had gotten loose, and then proceeded to lose his balance. The way Kíli whined his name when he had scrambled up had been worth it, Fíli thought smugly.

So when Dwalin, ever the subtle one, pushed a newly hyped up Kíli a little further against Fíli after a giggle fit that just didn't seem to stop and ordered, "Calm your brother down, Fíli," well, he intended to do just that.

"I'd like to see him try," laughed Kíli.

"Come here," said Fíli.

There was this thing that humans did, and so it was something Fíli had enjoyed experimenting with in his younger years, when everything was still new and needed to be tried out. Until that one time Thorin had given him a firm speech. But Thorin was on the other side of the halls, somewhere, and not remotely in sight. So Fíli tipped his brother's head up, took a deep whiff from his pipe without allowing it further into his lungs, and cocooned his hands together as a funnel between his lips and Kíli's.

If all of the gathering around them quieted at that, well, Fíli didn't know. He'd done this plenty of times, and his mind wasn't about to question their closeness now. Besides. Kíli, who had never been on the receiving end of him, must have done this with someone else too. He eagerly sat straight, "Come on then!", and breathed in the strong fume that passed onto him when Fíli breathed it out.

The smoke went straight to his head. When Fíli removed his hands and unlocked the inches of space between them which had kept them together, Kíli reeled back into his pile of pillows with a blissful look on his face.

All at once the company erupted in laughter.

"What did you do?" Ori called in confusion.

"Oh, laddie, you're too young to know about the likes of that. And you," he pointed to Fíli, "Better make sure Thorin doesn't find out about that."

Fíli grinned. "Well, don't tell him then."

"Aye. Nor will I tell him what exactly you've been smoking, lad."

"Special occasions only."

"What _has_ he been smoking?" Ori huffed. He continued to do so as Dwalin ruffled his hair with a big hand and told him nothing.

Fíli laughed when he looked at Kíli and the way Kíli's eyes seemed to roll with that wonderfully broad smile on him. He was definitely a lightweight, then. "Liked that, didn't you?" he grinned as he helped him up. The weight that suddenly leaned on him for support was enough of an answer.

"Hmm," Kíli grinned, "Again."

"You wouldn't survive it."

The younger mused. "Maybe. But it'd be such a sweet way to go."

The older acknowledged it with a nod and a pleasant smile. Kíli wouldn't see, for his back was slouched against him. Fíli liked to believe that his brother knew, anyway.

They sat like that for a while, until Kíli chuckled and said, seemingly to no one in particular, "Strange. I feel all warm inside."

Fíli's heart may have hammered in his throat at the words, but he tried to play it off. "You _have_ been drinking a lot."

"Mm, no, it's not that."

Things were getting awkward fast. The funny thing was that only Fíli seemed affected by it. He thought he could see Dwalin cast him an empathic look, but other than that everyone continued as if they hadn't heard. Fíli did the sensible thing. He stood up and held out his hand. "Come on. I'm tired, too. I'll take you to bed."

"Would you?"

Kíli's eyes were unfocused and his smile was still unbridled. Nevertheless it felt like there was more weight behind his words than he let on. "Of course I would," Fíli played along. He wasn't sure what they were talking about anymore.

Kíli thought about that. In the end he shook his head. "... I think I'll stick around a little," he waved it off.

Fíli didn't know why his brother's words hit him with the force of a rejection. He thought he had this thing under control. Really. So he simply smiled, played along with it all, and bowed with a flourish. "As you wish." But he couldn't really do much else than leave after having just stated he was tired, himself. It was a matter of dignity.

The moment he turned around, his mask gave way and crumbled in a thousand pieces.

Dwalin definitely saw.

 

*****

 

Rivendell was beautiful. There were more waterfalls than Fíli had seen in his young life in the Blue Mountains. There were more animals too. Well. He didn't count the bats and cave dwellers of the mountains animals in their proper right. Animals he could eat. They were more like vermin that just came with living underground. But here, here there were deer, and birds in many shapes and sizes. No carrion eaters like the hills and mountains west of the land, but hummingbirds so tiny that only seeing was believing.

It really was gorgeous, the way the frail nature-shaped pillars - so different from the coarse dwarven architecture he had grown up with - were able to support lattices of roofs.

Thorin appreciated none of it. The others appreciated a little - the food, whenever there was less cabbage and more of other food on the table. And then there was Bilbo, who seemed ready to sit down at every turn in his step and take in the environment. Who seemed just fine staying there while the others went off to chase the ghost of Erebor.

Fíli also found that the hobbit's company was easiest to be in, when his hangover made itself known. He sat down next to him at the long table that was dressed for lunch, and only then asked, "Is this seat taken?"

"Oh, no. Not at all." Bilbo was surprised, more than anything, at having a dwarf ask for his approval.

They sat like that for a long time, silent, while Fíli tried to get his hangover to subside and simultaneously lock out the noises of complaining fellow hung-over dwarves. Not all of them were there. Most were probably still trying to push waking up a few hours ahead of themselves. Kíli had been knocked out cold when Fíli had tried him.

"... If you want, I know of a way to get rid of your headache faster," Bilbo leaned in and confided in him at last.

"Please," groaned Fíli.

"Well. It seems lord Elrond anticipated something like this." Bilbo took some leaves from several dishes, and mixed it up with grains from some containers. Whatever they were, Fíli had no idea. He understood the tomato and the boiled egg though. A minute later, a decent meal stood made on a platter before him. One that didn't look too alluring. Fíli pulled up his nose.

"Yes, I know," Bilbo fussed. "But trust me, unless it's different for dwarves, this will do miracles."

"Do hobbits ever get drunk?"

"I was so this morning." Bilbo said it with confidence. They both thought the honour was questionable at best.

"From those few small glasses?"

"Ah. Well. I didn't say I am used to drinking excessively. I don't believe a great many deal of you actually tasted what you were drinking, now did you?"

"Fair enough." Bilbo's knowledge of herbs had pulled Kíli through his fever for sure. Though he still sneezed from time to time, it couldn't hurt to try.

Half an hour later, Fíli felt _good_. The headache was still there, but it was only a small knock instead of an insistent throbbing now. And the persistent urge to vomit had abated enough to slowly try more food.

As the meal kicked in, the table got more crowded. Some of the elves of the night before joined in over the next minutes, and Kíli took his seat opposite Fíli, right in between two silver haired elves. His eyes were still rimmed with sleep.

Even Thorin, two seats away from Kíli, looked like he'd been run over by an ox cart.

Slowly, a conversation started. Ori, one of the soberest of them all - probably because the others had all denied him anything strong over the course of the night - asked, "Where's Balin?"

"Uh."

Further silence.

Dwalin suddenly rushed up. He fell back at the onslaught of a profound hangover, and was held back by Thorin and Dori.

"Up and with a terrible pain in his back, no thanks to all of you," the scribe chose that moment to walk in. His gait was broken by a limp. He'd fallen asleep as one of the first, and no one had brought him to an actual bed, so he had spent the night on a wooden floor, tucked into a corner. But he didn't seem too bothered by it. His smile stretched. "Though I don't suppose I feel worst among all of us. You certainly look like you enjoyed yourselves."

Fíli wondered what his brother and the elf that sat between him and Thorin could be talking about. They certainly looked like they knew each other. They must have talked after he'd gone to sleep.

Well. He sat back and took another small bite of egg. No doubt Kíli had tons of new stories for the road ahead. Fíli couldn't wait to find out if he had somehow managed to discover something interesting.

He shifted on the pillows to make room for Balin, but Dwalin beat him to it and was gifted a thank you in return.

The elf that Kíli spoke to seemed to be entertained mightily by his mute brother, for a look was on his face that made Fíli unable to turn away from the scene.

When he leaned forward and took Kíli's lips in a gentle kiss, all hell broke loose at once.

Dwalin pushed himself over the table, delicate plates and trays in his path be damned, and launched himself at the man with a roar. Thorin, who was slow in the uptake, only realised at that moment what had happened. It made the difference of life and death. Dwalin's bulk, pinning him down, prevented their leader to do something far worse. Murder was writ in his eyes.

"Filthy elf!" he raged as he tried to pry Dwalin off him, while Dwalin at the same time roared; "Don't you touch him! He's not yours to touch!"

Some of the others were too surprised at the suddenness of the scene to move. Others got up immediately and swarmed the poor elf with curses and how dare you's.

Until Kíli shouted out, "Get off of him! What is the matter with you?!"

"He's an elf and he touched you, that's the matter!" Thorin lashed back.

Fíli just sat there with wide eyes, and a tug at his heart that was getting too much for him to handle.

"So?! It is none of your business! It is none of _anyone's_ business?"

"You're saying you _wanted_ him to kiss you?"

"He surprised me as much as any of you. But who kisses me and who I want to kiss is none of your business! I'm not a kid. I can deal with him myself!"

Fíli bit his lip. Why were all of the other dwarves suddenly staring at him? "Well?" Dwalin urged him.

"Well, what?" cried out Kíli exasperated. But he too now looked at Fíli, who felt the world shrinking in on him.

Fíli got up. Bilbo looked at him worriedly. He tried not to notice. He tried not to notice a lot of things. "Don't look at me," he said, "My brother's right. It is none of your business. Nor is it mine. I don't see why you're asking me for my opinion."

Kíli stared at him.

"I have a profound headache," Fíli said - only the hobbit knew he wasn't being honest, but thankfully he didn't speak up - "So if you'll excuse me."

Dwalin was baffled.

For many years now, Fíli had lived by a strategy. It meant he tried to appreciate what he did have, and not desire more. If he kept what he felt inside him, things would never crumble down - their friendship, their closeness and everything else that could never be more.

He couldn't help but notice as he extricated himself from the company that he was doing a pretty pathetic job at convincing himself.

Fíli fell apart the moment he closed the doors of their guest quarters behind him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ack, life happened! Thanks for your patience, everyone. Hope you enjoy this one! The next chapter is already in the making, so expect that one soon :)

"I know, you know."

Fíli looked up from where he sat.

"I thought you would."

Not much more did he give, uninterested in having this conversation, let alone with the dwarf who currently had him cornered. Seeing as there was nowhere to go though, with the door on the wrong end of the room and the bulk of Dwalin effectively barring it, it would be a waste of effort to deny it. "Speak what you come here for."

Dwalin wasn't much of a talker. Undoubtedly he'd had a plan. He seemed lost under the unexpected directness of Fíli's words that did not dally around the point however, looking for words. Frustration crossed over his face and at one point Fíli thought he was going to slip into a rage. "I don't understand," he grumbled in the end. "Why did you let him get away with it?"

When Fíli next looked at him, he didn't strain to smooth over his mask. Dwalin cringed at the raw expression.

"What would have been good reasons for me to do so? You seem to have it all figured out. Tell me. The way I saw it, a brother cannot judge another for the ill choices of others."

"Brother?!" Dwalin immediately shot back. "Hah! An older brother has every right, as you should know. Don't speak to me about Kíli of brothers, Fíli. You insult me."

"Then what should I speak of, Dwalin? He is my brother."

"You don't see him as your brother."

"But he sees me as one."

At those words, all the hurt was finally laid bare. The blond dwarf turned around and retreated further away from the door. He averted his eyes so as not to show anything. His hurt was palpable in the already quiet room nonetheless. Dwalin silenced at the words and let him move.

"I can never, ever betray that," Fíli finished, "I would lose him for it."

Dwalin leaned back against the door with a rough sigh. "What if you didn't lose him? What if he didn't see you as a brother and you are missing out because you're afraid to tell? What if he's waiting for you to ask?"

The expression that Fíli bore was almost pleading. Dwalin shut up at the sight. "That would be worth more than all the gold of Erebor. You don't see. Losing him, Dwalin, taking the jump and falling short, that would kill me. Why reach for the stars if you can see them bright and without a care from the mountain every night?"

Dwalin waved a hand about. "You have never seen war, lad. There are some things you will only realise once you have, and I hope you never will have to realise them that way. Follow your heart before it's too late. Don't live your life in regrets. They will rend you apart, even after all else is gone. Thorin knows that. All of us who fought, do."

"There won't be regrets."

As Dwalin spoke, Fíli's thoughts were pulled back to the dining halls. He wondered how his uncle dealt with all of that which had come to pass. An elf had touched his kin. While his brother wasn't to blame, he couldn't expect Thorin to not take it to heart. Kíli was probably still in lord Elrond's hall, seated next to his uncle. Probably scolded terribly, but unable to be dismissed to his chambers - Dwalin held them under lock enough for that. Fíli shouldn't have let him alone.

Amidst his vacant thoughts, some of the older dwarf's words rang home. They were spoken truer than he had expected from the warrior with his rough demeanour and usual incapacity of subtlety.

"He means too much to me, Dwalin," he said, "I will not risk it."

"You're a coward."

"I'm sensible."

"A coward," Dwalin repeated, angrier now. He folded his arms and raised his chin. "You are chiselling your grave six feet deep before you have even dared to live. Durin's blood runs thicker in your brother than it does in you, lad."

Fíli lost his calm. "Do not tempt me," he growled at the insult, pushing himself off the bed. A threatening haze surrounded him as he advanced on Dwalin. "Or I will make you see the wrongness of your words. What I feel is not a matter of discussion, and it certainly doesn't require your advice."

Dwalin snorted, but he eased back, at which Fíli also calmed down considerably. "Relax, lad. I just hope to put some sense into you."

"Sense? You would pull Kíli away from me."

"The opposite, as a matter of fact. Everybody talks about you two, you know. We all see what's there. So I am here with you and admitting it to your face - there's a number of others who think exactly the same. You can't fool us any more than you're trying to fool yourself. Thorin doesn't see yet, but Thorin's eyes are focused on the Lonely Mountain now." Dwalin sighed. "Look, we just want you to be happy. If that means I have to tell him myself...-"

"You will do no such thing."

"If you leave me no choice, Fíli."

"No."

"Would you rather tell him yourself, or have him find out once Thorin puts two and two together?"

"He will not know. That is final."

"He will find out once Thorin does, then." Dwalin threw his arms in the air, defeated. "Fine. I pity you the day that happens, lad." His sadness bore into Fíli, even as he turned and moved to open the door. Fíli only stumbled back against the bed. He was weary of it all, so tired of it. Kíli's kiss with the elf stood etched onto the back of his eyes. Every time he closed his eyes, it would replay itself, until he had seen it so many times that the movements became a blur and it was hard to discern what really happened. That which stayed sharp no matter how many times it took to repeat, was the sense of jealousy. Betrayal.

"Dwalin! What are you doing here? Is Fíli in there?"

Kíli's voice. Fíli's eyes shot open. The door was ajar. A large hand was still closing it, but not fast enough. He couldn't see his brother though, so he had to still be outside. His hands rubbed his eyes in a dismal attempt at fixing himself up properly until he could at least pass as hung-over.

"He doesn't feel good. Nausea, headaches, drank too much. Balin asked me to check up on him. He's trying to sleep. I think you'd better leave him alone for a few hours."

"Oh," Kíli's voice paused. Did Fíli truly hear a disappointment in his voice, or was it his imagination playing him parts? Thorin must have really upset him. "Alright then, I suppose."

The door closed. Thank the gods it didn't open again.

In the darkness that followed, Fíli dared take a breath.

Dwalin had no idea how much his words tempted him.

*****

In the heart of Rivendell that night, they made a campfire.

It wasn't necessary, for warmth was around them and meat turned charred on smaller improvised skewers aplenty. The fire was comfortable though, and homely - more homely to the dwarves than the way the last homely house had been living up to its name in the days prior - and needed in ways that the elves couldn't understand.

The company around the fire consisted strictly of dwarves, one hobbit and a wizard who flickered in and out of the company for purposes that no one understood and quite frankly also didn't much care for.

Thorin sat solemnly at the head of the company. His features were lit by fire, and still as cut stone. At his left, Bofur told the story of Moria. Gruesome and tragic as the tale followed, there was no room for laughter. None moved, even Bilbo, to whom the darkest days of dwarvenkind should matter little, save for a bout of sympathy. He was surprisingly one of the quietest and most affected among them.

Kíli sat behind Thorin. His hands slipped through dark hair and carefully untangled the strands. The undone clasps of iron lay on the stone next to him, glinting in the light of fire. Kíli's eyes were not on the fire. They didn't focus on anything, but looked down without seeing. The braids that came undone and were redone were solely the work of his fingertips and their sensitivity.

He was making peace with Thorin for what had happened before, Fíli realised. He couldn't stop looking at the gentle gesture. No one paid him any mind.

When Kíli did look up and their eyes met, he turned away immediately.

Fíli berated himself for his lack of spine. This was Kíli. His brother. There was no reason for him to look away. Oddly, when he snuck another glance a few seconds later to gauge the younger's reaction, Kíli had taken to quietly smiling to himself.

The story of Moria came to an end, and the gathering woke as from a trance. As did Thorin, who nodded at Kíli and spoke to him. The young dwarf said something back and finished with a nod. He got up on his feet. They then took him away from the fire and out of view.

Fíli rested himself back against the stony edge of the circular courtyard where their hosts had allowed their campfire to be held. Above him, arcades dwindled into a star-shaped roof. Ivy wrapped around its columns and gnarled branches rooted them down into the elaborate floor. It was a wonderful sight to see the shadows of fire lick their way up along it, consuming the structure whole without harm done.

"Feeling better?" Kíli quite suddenly crouched down next to him.

Fíli jolted at the surprise, at which his brother cast him a wide grin and made his own deduction. "Did I scare you? You look like you're better. I'm glad. You worried me there!" The thump to his arm could have done with a bit less weight behind it. Fíli winced and opened his mouth to complain. It was welcomed, though, this casual contact when everything else seemed to push him forward to a confession.

"I wasn't that bad," Fíli uttered.

"Dwalin kept me from looking for you. I bet you vomited."

Fíli opened his mouth, but a fitting retort eluded him.

Kíli burst out laughing, which garnered them some attention from the others. He ignored it. "I was right!" Kíli crooned, "You did vomit!"

Fíli cursed himself. "I did not!"

"You so did. Come on, brother, there's no shame in that."

Bilbo cast him a sad glance from where he sat. Fíli groaned. Great, the hobbit was in on it, too. There was only one thing to save him from a night of pity and heartache. He changed the subject. "How is Thorin?"

That calmed Kíli down alright. He sat down properly and pulled his hands around his knees. By now most of the dwarves had stopped paying attention to them, for which Fíli was grateful. He leaned his shoulder against his brother's for support.

When Kíli spoke up, it was quieter. "He tries, but he hasn't forgiven me yet. I try hard to appease him. He knows I do, so I think he tries to tell me he appreciates it, but he's proud. I must work harder."

"You didn't do anything he needs to forgive you for."

"I believe it's the idea rather than how it happened that upsets him. And for that I am unfortunately guilty."

Dwalin stared at them from the other side of the fire. His mood seemed dark, and darker by the minute. No, he wasn't staring at them. Fíli frowned. He stared at Kíli. Wasn't his trouble with him? Fíli snapped out of it.

"What about you?"

Kíli blinked curiously. "What about me?"

Fíli shrugged. He tried very hard to be casual. "Well. You were courted by an elf."

"Ah. Yes." Kíli smiled awkwardly. He rubbed at the base of his neck. "That was... strange, wasn't it? I didn't accept it, if you must know. Everything about it was odd. If being kissed without invitation wasn't enough, well, Dwalin suddenly went about shouting that it 'was not supposed to be him'. As to which he still hasn't told me what exactly he meant. Thorin hasn't forgiven me. I get this strange feeling that you haven't forgiven me either, but you're trying hard not to let me know for my sake or something. I'm grateful for that. It's been a hard day."

He didn't accept it. Kíli hadn't accepted. While that was enough to push all of the day's stress out of his body in one giant heave, Fíli felt part of it kick back at Kíli's latest comment. He tried to think of something sensible to say - something that didn't sound as guilty as he felt. He didn't want that to rub off and ruin the remainder of his brother's day as well. It had already been a trying one. Kíli instead just made everything worse by closing his eyes and leaning his head to rest on his brother's shoulder. He sighed out. "That is why you walked out on me, isn't it? It's alright."

Fíli hadn't realised he kept his breath until he opened his mouth to speak. He wanted to correct that it wasn't walking out on him, that he had a hangover, and he definitely wanted to get rid of the thought in Kíli's head that he still had to forgive him. There would have been little white lies that would have had to been weaved through there to not let Kíli on to what was really the problem. What he said instead was something small and sincere. "I thought you'd be mad at me."

Kíli hummed peacefully. "I was at first. I don't know, it's hard to stay angry at you. Especially after Thorin blew up."

When Kíli nuzzled at Fíli's throat, he thought he positively couldn't hold his promise to himself much longer. Then Thorin stared at them and Kíli got up straight away. "Sorry," he apologised, "There's work to be done, things to be fixed. Will we have time to continue later?"

"Sure," though Fíli wondered what exactly it was that Kíli wanted to continue, , as he saw him dart off after a last smile and head in Thorin's direction once more.

Dwalin passed him in his way to wherever. They bumped shoulders, enough stalled time to deliver a message, and he muttered a quiet thing that was only meant for Kíli to hear, but which Fíli couldn't help but catch.

"Little deceiver, stringing everyone along in your lies."

As soon as he came he was gone, leaving Kíli standing shaking in Dwalin's wake. Fíli frowned. He didn't understand what the words meant. When Kíli turned and looked at him and Fíli realised he was not supposed to have overheard this bit of private information or even be looking at him, he understood one thing clearly. Biting his lip, his wet eyes trying to blink away the buds of tears furiously before they could bloom and trying, trying not to let anyone see, Kíli had been hurt to his core.

*****

There were no sobs that wrecked the frame pressed against him. No wails would let his anguish be known. When Kíli cried, only his breathing hitched. And oh, how expertly he was trying now to mask even that small detail up.

Fíli hummed in a way he hoped was soothing. He didn't like it when Kíli hurt. It made his heart clench and his mind burn with a vengeance against whoever caused it. The times when he himself was cause of Kíli's distress were the worst. They had never been as strong as the hurt that seemed to be delivered this time.

"Shh," he whispered, "I'm here. Forget what he said."

For a while Kíli seemed intent on doing so. His breathing stilled and he pulled the pillow closer to himself. Their room in Rivendell was quiet. Only the song of crickets broke it, though this night Fíli found the ambient sound to be soothing. His fingers combed through Kíli's unbound hair gently, as he pulled the younger's back closer against his chest where they lay on Kíli's bed.

"He's right," Kíli whispered when Fíli just thought he must have fallen asleep. Kíli's voice was raw.

Fíli continued untangling his hair. If he was curious, he didn't let it show. "Of course he's not."

"I'm a deceiver. He has the right of it."

Fíli made no move to stop Kíli from continuing, but something turned cold in his chest.

"Elan... the one who kissed me, that's his name. I think I deceived him too. We were drinking, and then you left, and I let him talk to me."

If Fíli held his breath, not sure if he wanted to know, he tried not to let it show. He didn't want to think of it. So he let his hand rest on Kíli's shoulder and shook his head. "That's not deceiving anyone, Kíli. You couldn't know he would read too much into it."

"I may have hinted at more than talking."

"... Go on."

Kíli shuddered. He took a deep breath of air. "Dwalin may have stopped me from going through with anything."

There were times when enough was enough. Fíli was tired of the many times he had felt like his heart couldn't take more these past days. He was always proved wrong. A numb feeling subsided where the tear was felt strongest. He was so tired. Yet he instinctively pulled Kíli closer against himself.

"I was drunk," Kíli continued, distraught, "It's no excuse. I can't explain why I did what I did either. I just... it's been so long, I guess. I wanted to feel special to someone. Now Dwalin believes me to be of loose morals and Thorin - of course he told Thorin! - thinks even less of me than he already did."

Fíli was beginning to be profoundly annoyed with the way Dwalin kept meddling in their lives. So he yearned for his brother, who had flirted with another man and had been stopped. He was beginning to suspect that Dwalin only called Kíli a deceiver because he knew how Fíli felt about him, and that just wasn't fair to Kíli, not unless Kíli knew. Kíli didn't know, though. Fíli was positive about that much at least. His lips pressed what he hoped was a calming kiss against Kíli's temple. He frowned when Kíli's breath again derailed at the touch and pulled back to just hold him tight.

"I don't think less of you," he reassured Kíli. "How are you not special? You've been special to me since you were days old and already demanding attention. You know you need only ask and I'd do everything to make you feel better."

Kíli shook his head. It remained quiet for a long time. Then he breathed, "You make me feel better just by being here, Fíli. You can't do more than hold me and just talk to me."

It was for those moments that Fíli vowed to himself once again to never let harm come to his younger brother. Even if that harm be himself. Warmth filled his chest and he chuckled. "Ever at your service."

Kíli laughed. It was a broken one, but a laugh nonetheless. "So formal, Fíli."

"You know how I am."

They lay like that for what felt like eternity.

At last Kíli, sleep-ridden, spoke, "Fíli, if I ever feel need to feel better...?"

"I will crawl into your bed and keep you there until you do. And if I am blind and fail to see it, then crawl into mine," Fíli finished.

The young dwarf nodded contently.

"You're the best."

"Sleep well, Kíli."

"Night, Fíli."

*****

As they set upon the road once again and took their ascent across the High Fells and into the Misty Mountains, leaving the glory and comfort of Rivendell's quarters behind, many a night did Kíli quietly sneak under his brother's blankets and slip his arms around his waist before his breath evened out.

He would insist in the morning that it wasn't because he was unhappy. Fíli was just the best way to get rid of bad dreams.

Fíli really didn't care for the reasons. He instead chose to put away the shadows around his own heart, those nights when Kíli didn't seek his warmth, by crawling into Kíli's bed. His reasons were always the of the same non-committal nature, when asked about. _I was cold_ , or, _I couldn't sleep_.

Dwalin kept his eyes on them. There were times that he continued to watch and watch, until it became unnerving. Whenever caught, Fíli returned a glare and Balin would look between the two of them with worry. That lasted until one night Dwalin at least threw his hands up and muttered, "I'm done with this. Suit yourselves."

Fíli knew he wasn't done with it at all. Sooner or later they would have another discussion. Fíli and Kíli were too close to get away unscathed, lately. He welcomed their new habits though; even more the moments he could fall deeper and deeper for his brother who was wrapped snugly in his arms, undisturbed if not for his guilty conscience.


	5. Chapter 5

They ran.

Their feet urged them across bridges of decaying wood, loping around the edges of several wide fissures beneath the mountain and here and there only a hair's breadth away from the deadly silent dark beneath them.

The most sickening part was that the entire town stood suspended on structures so weak that even as a goblin horde rushed over a parallel pathway to their side, looking to cut them off at the next intersection, Fíli saw their bridge give way and plummet a great number of its own into what lay below. And goblins - their king not included - where in general slight creatures with less weight on their bones than the dwarves. So when Gandalf managed to get a boulder in front of them, he wasn't sure whether following the large rock in its wake was such a good idea. Not when it also obstructed their view.

Thorin was ahead of them. He waited only once to make sure that Fíli and Kíli were still safe and with them, before he rushed the group forward again. It was almost like he knew the regions and which way to take. To Fíli, the dark outskirts of Goblin Town had long since ruined his internal sense of direction. They could be running straight back to Rivendell.

Then again, Rivendell would be much appreciated over this sordid mess.

"Kíli!" he called out when he didn't see his brother for a minute, but his brother was nocking arrow after arrow to send into the eyes and shoulders of goblins until his quiver was almost empty, only to be restocked when he rushed past the kills in his path and pulled the bloody arrows out with single, rough pulls. The sickening gore of pus and boils bursting with blood that was unavoidable with his ministrations that left no time to pause, splattered against his boots.

Kíli looked up and nodded as if to say he'd heard Fíli, before he continued to push their pursuers back.

There was no time to think about the very large possibility for the goblins to take him - either of them, but most especially him - down. Kíli did fine. Fíli brandished his sword. He would do his share of damage to get them out of here.

It made no sense when the Goblin King fell, and his lost weight suddenly dislodged the bridge on which they were standing. By all rights their passage should have been stronger, relieved of the dead weight that pounds and pounds of the foul creature provided. The support beams snapped though, and each of them held on for dear life as they rushed down to the root of the mountain, death only a knock against one of the sheer rocky walls ahead.

They were safe though. Kíli was safe. That was all that mattered.

*****

Dwalin had been right when he said Fíli had never seen war. Even after they cut down numbers and numbers of goblins - he had never seen such an easy disregard for life before, though his own survival meant more to him than any of the goblins he had hewn down - there were the orcs. 

Horrible as their encounters had been, Fíli knew that they were nothing compared to wars. He knew from the campfire stories of dwarven elders that war was much larger than that, spanning nations. They generally took years to end and consumed countless lives. Wars were not about a victory in the deaths of two orcs, nor in a few dozen goblins.

Fíli had no heart for any of it. As he clutched onto the feathers of the eagle that carried him, all that mattered was keeping his brother safe. Kíli in turn held onto him tight. He tittered, his eyes wide.

Battle was in his blood, as was it in any dwarf, but he too realised how many lives he had sniped out with the release of his bow's string, how many were killed by his blood-stained hands. They barely held on, trembling.

"He looks so pale," he whispered as they soared over the mountains so peacefully that it almost felt like all of the before hadn't happened. Almost, until they saw their leader and uncle lifelessly in the talons of the largest of eagles. "He will make it, won't he? He has to make it. He can't leave us here, not when we're so close. Can you see if he's breathing?"

Kíli, being the archer, should have sharper eyes than himself, but Fíli tried to see nonetheless. He shook his head. "I can't see. I'm sure he'll be alright."

He wasn't sure at all.

Kíli burrowed his nose against his brother's mane. "Oh, Fíli." He clung to his back for dear life. Fíli wouldn't be surprised if Kíli hid his face and was trying to pull himself together. He said nothing in return. There was a time and place for silence. When his eyes laid sight on Thorin again, he knew that this was one of those moments.

From the other eagles came the same concern. Once he saw Ori cast him a worried look. Bilbo, Fíli didn't see. Gandalf on the other hand looked as unworried as ever. It sent a pang of anger down his spine, or at least until his reason told him that a wizard's smile could be comforting, for wizards were ancient and knew things, and if they weren't worried, why should he be? "Gandalf seems hopeful," he relayed to Kíli.

Kíli masked a sniff. "Does he say anything?"

Fíli shook his head.

The flight of the eagles took too long. It might have been only half an hour, but in that half an hour Thorin needed looking after. If there was life in him yet, it needed to be salvaged.

The large eagle descended first onto the rock protruding from the woods. Fíli wondered if it was nature or the dwarves that had shaped it like a bear reaching out from the earth in years gone by. When his feet finally touched the ground, he ran forward to Thorin. Balin stilled him with a hand on his shoulder. "Sit this one out, laddie," he said, "There is nothing you can do. The wizard is with him."

"Is he...?"

There lay a smile on Balin's face, but it was a sad one. "We're not sure. He suffered a great deal in the fray, but there may be some hope left to us that we wouldn't have had, had Bilbo not done what he did."

Kíli rushed into him behind him. His eyes were wild. "Thorin!" he called out, and then, "Fíli! Get out of my way! I need to...- I have to...- Please!"

Thorin opened his eyes and moved up to sit with great difficulty. Gandalf sat back and smiled.

The wizard had intended for Fíli and Kíli to come closer now that danger had passed, for he looked at them and nodded. Kíli started pushing forward immediately. Relieved laughter rung from his lips. But Thorin had other plans. He turned his back to the company - Fíli saw that Kíli, distressed and hurt, didn't understand - and cornered the halfling.

"Did I not say you were a burden?!" he started slow.

Oh. Fíli frowned. Wait, that wasn't right. Bilbo had saved his uncle. He had done so much for them. He had helped him get rid of his hangover - not that Thorin had anything to gain from that, of course - and he'd attended to Kíli's fever so expertly that Fíli considered Bilbo to be pretty much forever in his debt. And so he couldn't accept the entirely unfair treatment their uncle was giving him right now.

"I'd sit this one out too if I were you, laddie," Balin whispered to him. "Wouldn't want to be the one to get between _that_."

So when Thorin suddenly hugged the hobbit and mumbled something against him - none of the company heard, though most of them could fill in the gaps - and Bilbo awkwardly accepted, he stood dumbfounded. He wasn't the only one.

"Told you I'd sit this one out," Balin mirthfully smiled.

"Mister Baggins!" Kíli boisterously stepped forward with a laugh. Fíli understood what he was up to a second too late and ran after him to stop him before he got his plan to completion. When he pulled Kíli back by his traveller's cloak, the young rounded on him with confusion. "Give them some space," he shook his head. Now was not the time for group hugs. 

Kíli pouted. "Spoiler."

There was no need for either of them to speak their gratitude that Thorin had survived.

*****

Beorn's halls were, well, _halls_. Fíli had never seen a place so large and yet carved with so much tiny detail. Every one of the pillars that held up the roof was a masterwork in itself. The oaken rafters had barely a crack in them yet, so young or well-kept were they. Only a giant would be able to reach them. There was a ladder in the corner that probably helped. The steps were almost as high as his entire body, though.

After dwarven battle came dwarven celebration. The way they were, with their host missing from his halls and the wizard pleasantly enjoying whatever he was enjoying outside the house, jugs of mead passed from hand to hand joyously. While in Rivendell there were the elves, and their pristine quarters in which enjoying yourself was a strained business for dwarves, there was no one here to judge them.

Ori rolled over the table laughingly and was held back from falling down by Dwalin, whose eyes were blurred. Thorin looked over his company with pride, although even he liked a celebration as much as any dwarf and only him remaining seated in his too large chair prevented the rush of nausea and consequent vomiting or tumbling down that inevitably followed.

Bilbo sat next to them, his nose red and his smile merry. "I will not be drunk!" he proclaimed loudly, "I will have you know that once was quite enough, thank you very much!" The way he swayed, on the other hand, told anyone he was well into his cups. When at once he tumbled forward and fell face forward into Thorin's lap, the party cried out with laughter while he stumbled up flustered and Thorin looked down at him awkwardly, not knowing what to do with this new situation.

Kíli grinned next to him, "I bet he's only keeping quiet because he owes him his life."

"Not sure."

"Why?" There was a nosiness that Kíli always had, that regrettably also always found itself amplified by inebriation. "Oh! No way."

Fíli shrugged. In his one hand he toyed with his pipe. The other accepted the jug and took a large swallow, before he passed it onto Kíli. Kíli looked at him the entire time. He took small sips, but he just kept on drinking. That was until Glóin pulled it out of his hands. Kíli wiped his mouth. "Anyway!" he slurred, "What was I talking about? Oh, yes! No way!"

"Of course not. Thorin and Bilbo?! Have you ever seen two people so different from each other?"

"Then why did you suggest so?!" reeled the other.

Fíli tapped his nose. "You. You're too adorable when you're like that."

Kíli just huffed, tapped his nose a little rougher in return, and got up. "Well, it's worth a good laugh." He stretched his legs. His boots were still outside, drying from being cleaned. It was a funny sight. Kíli straightened up. "Bilbo!" he called out, "Gentle with our uncle! We'll have need of him yet!"

Ori rolled off the table and onto Bombur at that. Glóin nearly wasted a mouthful of splendid ale that he hadn't had time to swallow, and the look on Thorin's face was downright murderous.

"Kíli..." he warned.

"Hmm?" Kíli darted in front of him. He sat down on the edge of the table in front of him, daring him to move. They all knew that once Thorin did, the dizziness would hit. Thorin did, too.

Bilbo tittered, affronted, "I am very gentle." The poor hobbit did not at all understand the next round of cheers that went up.

Many, many hours later, the world spun maddeningly. It took three knocks into pillars and corners to get to the sleeping hall. No one was there yet. That was not to say that Fíli went to sleep first. If he looked outside, he could already see dawn creeping over the sloping hills and woodlands that Beorn's house watched out over. No, it was rather that most of them had fallen asleep on the spot in the great common room.

The stillness of his bed came as a welcome surprise. The world still spun. He simply didn't have to keep himself standing anymore. Fíli sighed. He was tired, and drunk, and sleep was not going to be any problem.

Kíli crept against him under the sheets in the waning dark. Fíli didn't think when he turned around and gathered him in his arms against his chest. They never lay like that. Nor did they care, drunk as they were. Kíli fidgeted with a drawstring on Fíli's tunic. He grinned stupidly, shortly, before he quieted down.

"I'm glad the goblins and the orcs-," he whispered, forgot what he was trying to say, and had a lucky patch of clarity when he fumbled for it. "I'm glad they didn't take you away. I don't know what I'd, what I'd do."

It would have been easy for Fíli to tell his brother to go to sleep. He was too distracted by the clumsy play of Kíli with his shirt however; that, and many more things that he didn't want to put a name to. At two firm tugs, as if Kíli childishly wanted attention, he crossed the gap between them and pressed their lips together.

Silence stilled Kíli. His hands slipped from the drawstrings and he must have pulled back, for suddenly Fíli's lips were alone. He was sure he hadn't moved himself. Rejection didn't touch him however. Fíli was too far gone, or he would have listened to the voices that told him to stop a long time ago. With nothing but a primitive need for his brother truly affecting him, he crossed the space that Kíli had created between them and once again claimed his lips.

Kíli protested. Fíli registered that much. He tried to pull away again. His hands started pushing at his chest, and he whimpered. "Fíli. Please. You're drunk. Not like...- not...-"

Fíli stilled. He tried to look at Kíli. It was too dark. He saw the glistering of two round dark eyes, and soft lips that begged to be kissed. "Aren't you?" he breathed.

Kíli made no move. He was breathing hard. There must have been so many thoughts mulling over in his head, but when Fíli tried once again to kiss him, selfish as he was despite Kíli's protests, the younger did not move. Fíli nipped at his lips. He pressed them together, coaxing, tempting and caressing them so sweetly that in his drunken, usually uncoordinated spell, he surprised even himself.

It did not last long. When Kíli parted his lips and bade him entrance, his chest rising and falling with heavier and heavier breaths, Fíli cupped his face and pulled their bodies together. A primal need to claim and own overtook him. He grasped at his clothes and kissed him deeper.

When Kíli first returned the kiss, it shattered his world completely.

Fíli crawled on top of the younger. Soon they were both tugging at each other, gaining better purchase and losing some. Kíli's legs wrapped around Fíli's hips, as Fíli's elbows supported him on both sides of Kíli's head. The moan that ripped itself so delicately from his lips had Fíli ground his body down in reply. His world swam before him. Nothing had ever felt this good. There wasn't a speck of sense left in him, or he would have remembered himself to put it all to memory. He would also have felt so thankful, so full of love, yet perhaps bewildered by the reciprocation. Instead heat crawled up his body, from his lips to his fingertips and then _there_ , and turned him into something so unlike himself - all urge and need and unravelled in the most wonderful way possible.

Kíli flipped them over. He attacked Fíli's lips with a passion and let a hand slip under his shirt. It splayed across hot skin and brought a sigh to his lips, which Fíli lapped up at once. When he rolled his hips, Fíli positively fell apart. "Again," he breathed. Kíli complied eagerly.

Fíli pulled him down for a deep kiss and turned them over again.

Lost in each other, they did not notice the door to the sleeping hall open quietly, and the figure stand still. Neither did they notice, busy as Kíli was sucking a bruise against Fíli's shoulder, the door closing and sliding into lock.

They may have found it odd the next morning that the beds were entirely empty, or the knowing smile that Balin would cast both of them when they joined for breakfast. Perhaps even the knowing smiles of others.

There may have been many wonders that morning, away from battle and in the warmth of a welcoming house, but all that Fíli felt when he opened his eyes and looked at the slumbering form of his sweet brother and _remembered_ , was guilt. Guilt for remembering. All of it. They had been too drunk. _Kíli_ had been too drunk. And Fíli had taken advantage of that wholeheartedly, not a moment to hesitate.

The worst part, he thought when he quietly made his way out and dreaded the postponed but eventual moment he'd have to face the mess he had made of things, was that it had been beautiful.


	6. Chapter 6

The morning sun sloped its light sleepily across the green hills for as far as the eye could see, spotted only by the roof of tufted clouds overhead. And a beautiful warm day it would be, a gem in the midst of autumn's unpredictable chills.

It might have been ridiculous, he thought later on, to climb up on the roof of the massive house to have some time alone. Especially with the headache that pounded like a war drum against his skull. But ridiculous as it was, due to the sheer height of the house certainly no one would be able to find him up there. Well, Gandalf perhaps, but Gandalf hadn't been around yesterday and Fíli doubted he would be there today. Which was fine by him; his mind wasn't set on travel in the least.

From the hall under the thatched roof on which he lay, voices started drifted through the chimney to reach his ears. Everyone was waking up. He could hear a table be set, cutlery and plates gathered and someone rummaging through the pantry which Beorn had offered them for the duration of their stay. That was probably Bombur.

Fíli took a deep breath. He never wanted to descend. Then he'd have to face Kíli, and all of the things they had done that night. Fíli remembered all of it; he wasn't blessed like most dwarves with an amnesiac afterdrink. He remembered how his brother had kissed him back, and rolled him over - anything but the passive kiss that Fíli on his best days could have hoped for - and they had fallen into a tumble that had surprisingly kept their clothes on and their hands fairly at bay - even if their hips did seek out a maddening friction. Fíli wished he had taken it further. It was probably the only chance he'd ever get. When he would have enough of the altitude and make his way to the floor level, there would be Kíli. Fíli wasn't yet ready to hear the rejection. He did not think he could bear it.

Thorin's daily head count must have concluded that he was missing. The dwarves and hobbit started scurrying around below him, calling out his name. It didn't take long for the murmurs to increase. There was Bilbo, whose voice was timid and whose methods of searching resembled more of a polite inquiry at crevices and behind chairs than the hurricane that Dwalin left in his wake while he looked for Fíli. He screwed his eyes shut. Too soon, it was too soon. He wasn't ready for this yet.

"I'm outside!" he called out at last when he couldn't bear the many worried mumbles of his comrades below him any longer.

 _Climb up on the roof Fíli_ , he thought to himself, _you'll have some peace. No-one will bother you. You'll be alone and quiet there._ He scorned at the gullibility of his own assumptions.

When the group moved the search party outside and Óin eventually found him on the roof when he squinted at the sun, Fíli only had eyes for Kíli and the blank look in his eyes. He tried a smile. Kíli didn't return one. "What are you doing up there?" he called out. It felt like a slap in the face. His brother of all people should know the answer to that.

"Enjoying the scenery," he called back in similar nothing-has-happened fashion, though it broke his heart, "Come on up, you should see it."

"I'm going to eat something. Catch you later, brother."

And with that, Kíli was gone. Balin, who had followed the conversation curiously, grew visibly confused at the coldness of the words. He wasn't alone. Fíli sat back. Though, he reasoned, that could have been a lot worse.

He wondered if Kíli shared the gene for excellent memory performance during even the strongest of alcohol inebriations. Wouldn't that be convenient, to have him not remember and this whole ordeal be done with in a blink?

"Fíli! Off the roof with you! Need I remind you we are guests in this place? You are a disgrace to your upbringing."

Well. Thorin certainly shared the gene.

 

*****

 

Kíli broke the bread and passed it along to Thorin and Bilbo. He offered his second-to-last part to Ori, who looked like a century of life had escaped him in the night that had passed, and kept the last for himself.

Fíli took his own bread with a frown. Just when he reached for the honey jar, Kíli grasped it away from his reach to lather his own bread with it, and decidedly kept it on his side of the table. There was no reaching it unless Fíli crawled on top of the table. What was worse was that Kíli avoided looking at him wherever he'd look.

"Kíli, hand your brother the jar," Thorin mingled gruffly.

The times that Thorin meddled in their squabbles were sparse. They were also explosive, with at least one of the two brothers feeling guilty for days and avoiding the other - but usually it was them both. Maybe that was why Kíli reacted at once, offered Fíli the jar and did his best to put on an apologetic smile. "Sorry, didn't see you wanted it."

"Thanks." The smile tugged. They were playing a charade, with Thorin in the middle of it. As long as their uncle could be convinced that everything was fine, for the company everything would indeed truly be fine. And Fíli really didn't want anyone to meddle. Dwalin had tried that. It hadn't gone well. Dwalin still cast them suspicious looks and Kíli occasionally a particularly foul one. Imagine the awkwardness if one of the others started. Bofur for instance would be a disaster, with his good intentions and soft demeanour. Fíli would burn him to the ground without meaning to, if Kíli hadn't already, and then Thorin's wrath would really be dreadful indeed.

"Thank you," Thorin repeated before he dug into his own bread.

Balin still looked between the both of them.

Everything after that was strained. Fíli's hopes that Kíli might not remember dwindled with every interaction between them. Kíli was so cold, so unnaturally distant whenever he attempted to talk to him that it couldn't be any other way. Eventually it became a test rather than an effort to reconcile - Fíli needed to know if he remembered. When he proposed to go hunting - something that Kíli always loved before - he was met with a cold shoulder. Scout the area - profound disinterest. Even when he suggested they do nothing and just hang out all day, watching the others busy about, Kíli shrugged and shook his head. "I don't feel too good, I think I'll take a nap later," he said.

Eventually Fíli stopped bothering. So the younger of them two needed space. They would sort this out later; only harm could come if Fíli continued to bother him over and over with disregard to Kíli's feelings about it. But all in all there was no doubt in Fíli's mind left about his brother remembering - nor his alignment to the whole affair. Maybe he could use some time alone himself as well, he thought bitterly. Things were going to get rocky for them yet.

So when Kíli rubbed his neck and awkwardly leaned closer and whispered, a moment when no one else paid attention, "I'm sorry, Fíli. I want to, but I really don't feel too good. I think I really drank too much last night. I woke up this morning and I can't even remember how I got into my bed," well, that was a tad unexpected. It also made Fíli feel a whole lot better.

Not to mention they were on speaking terms again.

With his heart slowly warming up again, the older of the two smiled gently. He leaned back against an oversized branch - it seemed that the whole area was oversized for the likes of dwarves. Even Gandalf looked smaller in comparison. "I put you there," he allowed, "I lay with you for a while, I don't know if you remember." Well, it wasn't a complete lie, even if he was beating around the bush a little conveniently. And Kíli looked a whole lot more hopeful at his words.

"It's not like you to wake up before me," he tried.

They were bound to have this talk some time. "I went out to clear my head. A lot has happened lately."

"Hmm," Kíli acquiesced, "I suppose a lot has."

The subject that brooded between them however remained unbreached. It was a bit precarious, all of it. Fíli didn't want to ask Kíli to his face whether he remembered. If he didn't, and Fíli treated it like too much of a big deal, then he'd create undue suspicion. If Kíli did remember, well, it'd be instantly obvious that Fíli did too - but in that case the trouble rested in the issue of consent. Had Kíli wanted it? Because if he hadn't, and Fíli had, that would mean the coming to be of all that which he had tried to prevent. The breach between them would be wide and deep.

Kíli squinted. "I didn't do anything... _weird_... now did I?"

"Weirder than you usually do?"

"Mm." His brother shrugged, tentatively.

Fíli shook his head. "Perfectly pleasant for one so tanked." He chewed the inside of his cheek. If Kíli didn't remember, no harm done. If he did however, he feared that he may have given it all a bit too much innuendo. And then his mouth slipped out in addendum, "If only you were like that every time you got into your cups. My life would be so much easier."

If that may have been pushing fate - Fíli's heart stopped for a moment at his own daring - Kíli's smile indicated altogether elsewise, brighter than the morning sun. "Alright. That's good." He fidgeted. "So, uh, about that hunt. Two, three hours from now, would that be good for you?"

"Better than ever," Fíli feigned comfort, while his blood rushed through him with a maddening pulse.

 

*****

 

The fires held no game that night. It would have been rather indecent, Fíli and Kíli had come to realise far away from the house just when Kíli pulled his bow out to aim an arrow at an unsuspecting rabbit, to ignore Gandalf's request to not bring dead animals into the house. The dwarves had rumours about the nature of their host, and the insufferable amount of honey that served as a base for just about everything in the pantry. So they suspected that a tight closeness to nature of their host was why Gandalf had asked.

The fires were still warm and inviting however, in the middle of the hall where the autumn night proved cooler than expected. Dwalin passed Nori and Dori as he walked closer to the fire. He stole a plate from Bombur's preparations and sat down next to Fíli close to the hearth.

Kíli was again doing his best to settle things between him and Thorin. He had brought him a pastry of honey, nuts and crumbled dough and had been sitting next to him all night. Thorin's hair was still in proper shape, so grooming it wasn't necessary. It was obvious that Kíli had asked several times for the honour regardless. In the end, what with Thorin discussing politics with Gandalf who had joined them for the occasion, he took to poking the fire and coaxing it hotter.

"Balin told me something interesting," Dwalin started as they both turned from watching the brown-haired dwarf to their own conversation. Fíli turned a piece of wood around in his hand. His dagger carved a sleek line out of one side. "What's that?" he said amenably.

Dwalin stuffed his pastry into his mouth before Bombur could find out. He raised an eyebrow at Bilbo staring at him with eyes sharp as a hawk and wiped his beard. "Honey. What I would do for a nice piece of rib."

"There's cabbage and potato."

"Argh. That's no food. And even that is too sweet around here."

Fíli laughed. He was in a good mood. Kíli regularly threw him looks, which didn't go unnoticed, and while the subject of last night still hadn't been cracked, he felt like something lingered between them. It was not at all unpleasant. "You were saying?" A curved edge on the wood was chipped to be sharper, more angular.

"Balin mentioned he locked the dorm hall yesterday night. T'make sure nobody walked in on accident, he said."

"... You're here to ask me about Kíli." As Fíli dreaded.

Dwalin grinned. "Seems there's less of a coward in you than I thought, laddie. I ought to take back my words."

Fíli wouldn't be too sure. He frowned to himself. "He was drunk."

"Did he kiss you back?"

A nod.

"That's decided then. Good. Was about time, too. Any longer and I swear, lad, we would have had to do something about it ourselves."

Annoyance turned its angry face on Fíli very swiftly. He was going to say something to discard the discussion-that-wasn't-a-discussion in a single sentence, but he was beaten to it by his brother, who swung his arms around his neck and floated a keg of ale before him. "Drink, Fíli!" he laughed, "The night is too beautiful to waste not having a taste. Hah! They might make an honest poet out of me yet!"

"And how many have you been tasting?" Dwalin cashed back.

"Not nearly enough!" Kíli's lips tugged into a wide, cheeky grin. A glance at Thorin told that he and the wizard had retreated to less rambunctious quarters - probably outside - to continue their conversation. As if to demonstrate his words, Kíli took a large gulp and returned the keg to Fíli. "Something which I plan to do something about, as a matter of fact," he stated.

By the end of it all, after indulging Dwalin's company for only a few more minutes before he left on his own accord, the alcohol had once again rendered them incapable of walking straight. Most of the others were asleep. Thorin wasn't, having returned hours ago and actually having seated himself close to his nephews to enjoy in their heated discussions and usual closeness around one another. Kíli had kept himself slightly in check during that time, while before and after he just wouldn't stop leaning against Fíli or otherwise seek out physical closeness.

Fíli vowed not to get drunk, but under Kíli's attentions he did so anyway.

At what had to be around three in the morning - at least somewhere not too long before dawn, even if their sense of time was currently wonky at best - they stumbled up the gigantic steps of Beorn's house. There was a small hay attic. No one went there, because the steps were so difficult to climb and there was a certain respect that Beorn was due, but Fíli and Kíli were drunk and had decided it would be a wonderful challenge.

At the third step, Kíli already lay panting and whining that he was going to get down. Fíli, at the fifth step, laughed and slurred something incoherent, but he kept going. A challenge was a challenge. When Kíli found his spirit again and passed him by with determination, he only laughed and climbed all the faster.

Kíli won the honour of reaching the attic first. They were both cheated of any prize though; the quarter was stacked full with hay for the winter months. Not even room to wriggle somewhere in between and catch some sleep was to be found.

"Well, this is a waste," Fíli muttered.

"Yes, it is... Race you down?"

Fíli and Kíli grinned at each other. At the same time they rushed to their feet and started the descent. This went easier than expected. Within a minute both had their feet firmly planted on solid ground again. The effects of the rush tingled through their addled brains. Kíli nearly fell over. He laughed when Fíli steadied him. "Come on." Kíli grabbed his brother's hand and pulled him along. They alternated between walking, running and stumbling, as they merrily made their way to the door and then the veranda.

When Fíli's back bumped into one of the supports, Kíli was suddenly too close. His pupils were dilated and his attitude eager. When Fíli tried to move, he wouldn't let it. It confused him "Kíli?"

"Fíli," Kíli's acknowledgement came out as a loaded whisper.

The urge to kiss him came unbidden and fast. Fíli's lips went dry. Kíli's eyes flickered down when he licked them. His eyes were barely open; his hands already working their way up under Fíli's tunic. It was the most open of invitations that Fíli had ever chanced upon witnessing.

But it hurt. Fíli was drunk - and Kíli not less so. Even if his mind soared at the implication that their first kiss must have been more than a drunken impulse, or this wouldn't be happening, he didn't want their second one to be equally tainted by doubt and insecurity. He needed to know Kíli's feelings. If he took this kiss now, it would satisfy him only until the morning and then come back to haunt him. He needed to know. "What are you doing?" he whispered back.

"Nothing...," Kíli drawled out. The hypnotic delight on his lips made it obvious that he was hinting at _something_ though.

"Kíli, please tell me." It came out more broken than he intended.

"Really, nothing." Kíli nuzzled his ear. The effect shot straight down to Fíli's groin. Kíli's hands brushing his sides only amplified it all. "What are you going to do about it?" his hot breath brushed Fíli's ear. He wasn't going to tell. Fíli shuddered. He was this close from ignoring the tiny strand of reason that prevented him from ravishing his brother there and then. And Kíli wasn't making it any easier on him.

He pushed his last bit of sanity to the front of his mind, as desire and doubt raged their all-consuming battle inside. "What do you want me to do about it?"

Kíli pulled away suddenly. He searched Fíli's eyes and frowned. Kíli clearly didn't understand. His agitation rose fast and he pushed the older away. "Nothing," he repeated his previous mantra with a bite, "Nothing at all." At that, Kíli stepped back and turned away. He was gone before anyone could have stopped him.

Baffled, Fíli sank down against the oaken veranda support. A thrumming headache was beginning to develop. Fíli's palms dragged across his face, until one covered his mouth. His eyes were wide. Fearful. Shit.

He had most likely, by needing to make sure, not saved their friendship but instead ruined it all. Of course Kíli had been hinting at a kiss. If he thought back on it now, with his mind already sobering from the ale, there was no doubt. None, whatsoever.

Dwalin was right. He _was_ a coward.

Fíli would talk to Kíli in the morning.

He would tell him, and they would work it out.

They had to, if only for his sanity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry! The chapter wasn't supposed to end here... Half of the next chapter is already written and waiting to be posted, but Mirkwood is coming up and I need to reread some passages from the book, and I didn't want to leave you guys waiting for a week. Hope you enjoyed this chapter though! It's going to get rockier for Fili for a while, so please hang in there.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	7. Chapter 7

No matter how Fíli tried, Kíli refused to be caught alone.

He steadfastly looked the other way or accompanied Thorin - which meant that seeking him out was of the question, unless he wanted their uncle to know, and then hell to come hailing down. Whenever he wasn't doing either of the things, he occupied himself otherwise, always in the company of someone else. It was impossible for Fíli to approach him.

At the entrance of Mirkwood, they bade farewell to their ponies and their wizard. Arranging everyone's gear and making sure that their provisions were ample - or as ample as it was going to get - took the company some time. Fíli gathered his wits. He tried one last time.

"Can I talk to you?" he interrupted a conversation between Kíli and Bofur.

Kíli raised him a brow. "What have you got to say?"

"Alone?"

Bofur looked between the two of them nervously as Kíli shrugged. "I'm sorry, as you can see I'm talking to Bofur now. If you need to tell me something, you can tell me here. Otherwise, I'm sure it can wait."

"I can leave," Bofur offered, "Bombur looks like he could use some help sortin' things out." True to his words, Bombur indeed looked closer to tumbling over than fixing all his gear in place. The loss of his pots, pans and cauldron had been heavy on him. He was getting angry at their meagre rations of honey and nuts.

"Of course not," Kíli spoke, and called out, "Can somebody help Bombur, please?!" Even Bofur cringed at Kíli's apparent anger. He stayed seated where he was and threw Fíli an apologetic look.

Fíli nodded tersely. "Later then."

Thorin's deep voice interrupted. "Is something the matter, Kíli?" Of course Kíli's demanding and rather rude call had reached his ears too. It ticked some sense into Kíli, who had the decency to look away ashamed. "I was out of line, uncle."

"Get up and help him."

Kíli got up. He cast one last cold look at Fíli before offering his apologies to Bofur and heading over to the largest dwarf of the company. Fíli grimaced. Thorin could certainly have picked his punishment better.

The Mirkwood was a quiet place. Darkness enveloped around them and soon even the light from the entrance faded away. The occasional sunbeam managed to pierce through the roof of leaves overhead at first, but not long after, even that disappeared.

Fíli would have dealt with the sorrow that inadvertently seemed to sink into his gut a lot better if Kíli was next to him and they could have shared a few ridiculous comments to cheer each other up. As it was, Kíli looked equally miserable as he walked next to Thorin and looked around with his bow at the ready. He might have hoped for something to shoot, but nothing showed itself. The silence was getting on everyone's nerves.

Everything looked the same. At the end of the day - though they could only tell by the way the day turned even darker until everything was dark as pitch - Thorin called out to the group to count their footsteps to measure how long they had yet crossed into the dead woods.

Most of them lost count a few days after at the growing concern over their dwindling rations however. In the end only Thorin counted.

Fíli never had a chance to talk to Kíli. In the dark, their senses felt heightened. Any whisper had the power to stretch a mile in every direction. There was no privacy to be had. Nor did they make light, for it attracted the grisliest of beady eyes in the dark, so using signs also proved futile. As the days stretched, Fíli grew ever more nervous. He snapped once when Ori asked whether he was feeling alright. What was the strangest was that Ori snapped right back. It was these damned woods; it had them in a twist. Fíli didn't speak to anyone until it was absolutely necessary from that point on.

One night, the company tried talking in the night. Their nerves were starting to get frayed and they really needed a merry conversation. They tried. Dwalin cracked a joke, and Balin told a legend of their kin from ages past. While the subject was heavy and rather sad, it was also more comforting than the clacking sounds that came from the woods whenever light left them.

Before long, they were telling each other funny stories about the others. Or rather, as funny as their hollow stomachs and despair could make them.

Ori recalled a time when Dori had brewed a particularly strong and, as it turned out later, hallucinogenic draft that had knocked out everyone who drank. Which, as it turned out, was almost their entire colony.

"Ah, that's nothing," Balin said in what would have been a laugh if the forest hadn't been so devastating for their good moods, "I remember one night Dwalin didn't come home. He was much younger then, and he was rather notorious for getting into trouble."

"Ah, not that one again!" Dwalin groaned. "Come on, friend, spare me a little."

Balin continued mirthfully. "He came home three days later. As it appeared, the lass he had been trying to charm between the sheets turned out to be a mountain hag, who had petrified when he wanted to enjoy the following dawn with her." At his laugh, the group chimed in. It would have been better with ale and a warm fire, but they made do. "The print on his arm where she'd held him as she turned to stone stood clear as day for months. No other girl got near him for a while. It was said he was so fierce a charmer that only death could trick him out of what he was after."

"Dwalin? A fierce charmer?" grinned Glóin. "I'll be damned to see the day."

"Well," Balin conceded, "That was a long time ago."

"I'll have you know I still got what it takes, if that's what you're implying, son of Gróin."

Their stories were a good distraction from the beady eyes that followed them everywhere on the road they were told not to leave, but inevitably silence returned to the party.

At last Kíli spoke. "I've got one."

"Oh dear," Thorin next to him sighed at the pitch dark, for Kíli's stories were similarly notorious with mischief. He might have stopped Kíli if he'd known what Kíli spoke next sooner however. "It's about Fíli." By then he was too late.

Fíli sucked in his breath.

"When he was getting around his age, he was a very big charmer too. Always bringing other girls home. Oh yes, a different one every time. Whenever I wanted to sleep and the door was locked, well, we knew what time it was again." Ori chuckled, though most of the others were quiet. There was something off about Kíli's voice. "At first I thought it was to keep me out. Nobody wants to be disturbed by baby brothers, after all. But one night, one night he forgot to lock the door and I found out it was to keep the lasses inside. You see, just when I wanted to go to bed, out she came a-shuffling!"

Fíli remembered that night. Nobody saw how his hands clenched into firsts, now how his jaw tensed. Why was Kíli telling them this?

"So I suppose I felt sorry for him. I went in and hugged him where was sleeping to try and comfort him. He must have thought I was the lass though. He only knew in the morning that the one with the red mark on his neck was, in fact, not. But I knew from the start why they all escaped him as soon as they could!"

Silence.

"Kíli," Thorin breathed dangerously.

"Why is no one laughing?"

 _That's because it's not funny_ , Fíli thought. His breath had been forced out of him and he couldn't speak. What had happened that night, so many years ago - Fíli had thought that was the past. They had talked about it, Fíli had apologised over and over again for kissing his younger brother, and Kíli had said with that shy nod that he'd long grown out of that it was alright, no harm done. They had put it behind them. Really, they were fine.

"Uh," sounded Bilbo. "Is this... I do realise I am awfully unfamiliar with dwarven culture. I'm sorry if I say something that's terribly offensive. I really don't mean it like that. But does this sort of thing... right, well, does it happen often?"

"No," spoke Dwalin grimly.

"Oh."

"Indeed," Thorin's deep voice thrummed through the heavy air.

The silence that followed grew tenser by the second. Fíli couldn't talk. Why? Why would he tell? And why would he suggest only now that he hadn't enjoyed it one bit? Not that Fíli had wanted his brother to enjoy that little misstep. No, that was long before he'd begun harbouring feelings for the younger. He was fine with Kíli not enjoying that particular moment. What it implied, however, went far deeper.

"Why was I not aware this had happened, Kíli? Fíli?"

Kíli huffed. "I'm sure you understand it's not exactly one of the highlights of my life. Quite the opposite, in fact."

They could all feel Thorin's anger raising. "Apologise," he at last snarled with so much superiority that even the others cringed. "To your brother, and to me. You have the audacity to tell something of his magnitude as _amusement_ to others? Have you no respect for your kin?"

"He never apologised to me."

Thorin was ready to lash out violently, but Fíli's voice stopped him short. "So many times," his fractured voice split across the dark. "You know I am so, so sorry for what I did to you."

"Yes?"

Fíli didn't know what to say. Kíli beat him to it.

"I hate you."

And the silence became suffocating.

Fíli wanted out. Away from this forest, from the company and especially away from his brother. If he couldn't get Kíli into the brawl that his brother was most certainly asking for, if he couldn't hurt him, be hurt in return and then make up afterwards like good dwarven tradition dictated... If he couldn't push him down, kiss the sense out of him and say he was so sorry without a company listening in, and that he loved him and had never meant to hurt him... if he couldn't do any of that and channel his feelings into _something_ , then his hurt would take him apart.

He did not say a word.

Dwalin took over. "Listen, you little punk-"

"You do not want to interfere here, friend," Balin pulled him back.

"Oh, yes, I do. Grant me permission, Thorin, and I will teach him how to treat someone with respect."

"You will do no such thing. If respect is what he lacks, I will be the one to see to it. He is mine blood, Dwalin."

"Did you hear what he just said?!"

"I did, loud and clear. I will speak with him. When we reach the edge of these accursed woods. I refuse to believe my sister's sons to have been raised this poorly, and I suspect it is this place more than anything."

"Aye," spoke Bifur, "I hear you. It is hard to be happy in this place. It's like it sucks the smile right off your face." Several others murmured in agreement at that, and even Dwalin eventually had to admit that he might have gotten a little carried away and would have kept himself much better under control if only he'd seen a shred of sunlight in the last few days. Dwarves stood the dark well. But the Mirkwood was not just darkness. It was despair and loneliness, and it carved its way into the insecurities of all.

The words didn't make Fíli feel any better. Kíli despised him.

He didn't speak a word the next day and he refused to look at his brother, even when Dori fell in line with him and begged silently to please talk to him, because Kíli wouldn't stop looking at him with so much hurt and guilt written on his face that it was only making the others sad as well. Surely, he could get over his anger as well and forgive him? It wasn't right for them to be apart.

Fíli did not say that the reason he didn't want to look at Kíli had nothing to do with anger. The words had stung too deep for that.

 

*****

 

Five days later, the company of dwarves and one hobbit had crossed the stream, had carried a sleeping Bombur for miles with hardly any food left, and yet they were no penny closer to the end of the dreadful woods.

Kíli had taken to sleeping next to Thorin after he had tried to appease Fíli by rolling out his blankets next to him and Fíli had turned around so as not to see him. He had lain down, tried to wrap an arm around his waist and pulled himself closer. Fíli had pushed him away before getting up and moving his bedroll next to Dwalin - who was pretty much the only one he could count on to be on his side, and whose disdain for Kíli had only grown since.

They were wondering how much longer their few crumbs of food would last when a cry came from ahead of them that they really needed to see this.

Red wisps of light darted in the distance when they crossed over a hill, off the path they were told not to cross and yet - somehow - soothing. They danced around another hill. In its centre stood a single large ash tree, surrounded by a circle of mushrooms. An otherworldly music seemed to come from directly underground. The tune beckoned the travel-worn dwarves forward.

More of the wisps gathered as they approached. When Bilbo reached for one, Balin instantly swatted his hands away. "This is strange magic. Do not touch them, master hobbit." And indeed, as they came closer they saw other lights, and tables, as though large outdoor halls had been carved into the forest itself. The tables were loaded with fruit and meat; one looked even more delicious than the other. And by the looks of it, none of it was tainted with the forest's natural blackness.

From around them came the song and company of woodland elves. They drank from their cups and laughed merrily at one another. None of them had noticed the dwarves at the foot of their hill. Well, none except one. She turned her head and looked at one of them serenely, young and yet centuries old as she was - albeit curiously. Her hair seemed to float about her and her skin was nearly translucent.

Kíli's eyes widened, but he couldn't turn away from her gaze.

She smiled.

It was the warmest smile that any of them had encountered in the weeks of darkness and misery. Balin and Glóin sighed even as she didn't look at them, for even they could feel the weight of the woods lifted from them. Fíli didn't understand why she only looked at some of them fleetingly, before she turned her gaze back on his brother. For all her age and knowledge of the world, she bore a fascination for him that was not unlike a child's.

They didn't understand when Kíli sank to his knees and held his head in his hands, nor did they understand when - with all the silence of the world and only tell-tale by the way his chest rose and fall - he cried. Fíli felt his heart wrench.

Thorin would have none of these trickeries. He'd already seen enough. "Careful," he warned like he addressed an army at the brink of marching at their enemies, not less than a score of dwarves with little motivation other than getting food and leaving these grounds behind. "These are elves we deal with. They will trick you if they can. Take nothing they have to offer."

"We will die if we don't eat. If they offer us food, I will bloody well take it," Bombur brought in, and Bilbo agreed with him as he exclaimed, "Oh my, venison! I think... yes, I believe I smell cinnamon! Oh, it's been too long since I've had cinnamon." Yet it was Ori who stumbled forward to the food and broke through the circle of wisps.

The lights went out all at once.

It had to be Bombur and Bilbo to be the only ones to wail, "Now look at what you've done!" when the all of others turned around in the deep darkness, disoriented by the sudden loss of light and food, only to be plunged back in the despairing currents of the wood. No trace of the elves lingered; it was as if they'd gone up in smoke. That, or straight into the hills. It was as if the music did continue softer and softer under their feet until it drifted away.

"Kíli?" Thorin called out, "Are you okay? Did they do something to you?"

Kíli's voice spoke with wonder. "I'm fine. It was like...-" he looked for words, "Like the first light of spring after a winter in the mountains, if you believe it. I felt warm. Happy. Overwhelmingly so." He was still shaking.

"They enchanted you," Thorin gruffly stepped closer, "Let me look at you, see if you're alright." Which was pointless, of course, because the dark would budge not even to Thorin Oakenshield. He tried nonetheless. Kíli complained when Thorin roughly let his hands examine his face and shoulders. "Are you positive?" the dwarf prince inquired at last with a large amount of doubt. These were still elves they were talking about.

"I am, Thorin," Kíli laughed.

"You sound like a boy in love," chuckled Dori, who found the whole thing to be strangely infectious. Kíli pointed at his direction expressively in the dark straight away at that, like he needed to pinpoint the words before they got away from him. He nearly hit Thorin in the face in the process.

"That's just it!" he exclaimed. "It was exactly like that! You know, wrapped with warmth and knowing that whatever happens, it'll be alright. It was like being in love." More surprised at his own words, he repeated, "Like being in love." Wasn't that odd?

"Ah," Balin sighed, "I could do with some of that. Next time, laddie, if she catches your eye again, you had better make sure you share with us."

Fíli hoped there wouldn't be a next time.

 _Wrapped in warmth and knowing that whatever happened, he'd be fine_.

Oh, he hadn't done a very fine job at that at all.

"Hmph. A Durin who attracts all the elves," Glóin muttered to himself. "Best get out of here fast and not into more trouble, I'd say."

By the way the green and blue beady eyes had surrounded them again as they spoke and looked to be increasingly gaining in numbers, none of them could agree more.


	8. Chapter 8

The next time they encountered the woodland party under the oppressive dark of the woods, it was not Bombur who cried out first. Nor was it Bilbo, who had started to share the corpulent dwarf's excessive appetite after he too had been woken up from the strange forest sleep - and had been looking for another chance at a feast the most out of everyone ever since. It was even so bad that whenever a stray beam of sunlight danced across the mossy forest floor, they already cried out and ran towards it.

They were well off the path by now. Whenever the darkness consumed their sight at night and in return pushed forward a heightened hearing and fear among the dwarves, and their stories were not enough to keep them from _thinking_ , they complained that oh, they should have listened to Gandalf. They should have never left the path. 

Their mutters were loudest whenever they felt they were not alone. Although they'd been rendered instantly mute the time Bombur asked whose hairy leg was brushing his hand, and complained that it wasn't funny and that whoever was doing it had better stop. And it didn't stop. It had taken them a long time before they had dared talk to each other again after that.

It was in fact Thorin who suddenly growled and called out, "Elves! Everyone together!" He would have blown his cover, were it not as if the elves within the circle of rocks on another one of the forest's sloping hills seemed to exist in almost a different time and space, and paid them no attention as they got closer, nor at the undeniable shout.

When they got close enough, Fíli braced himself. He hoped she wasn't with them; the lady who had enchanted his brother last time. Kíli hadn't been able to shut up about it for a day, until the usual dark of the forest returned to his heart as well. It wasn't really that he talked about her. In fact he strangely hadn't mentioned her once. No, it was simply that he kept talking with raised spirits. Kíli was happy. No-one else was, not in these woods. It wasn't natural.

Thorin seemed to have other concerns than the elven lady. "Dwarves!" he rallied, "We turn around! We will not take this food."

"Speak for yourself!" Bombur called out.

"Yes! What if we don't get another chance?" Bilbo reasoned with a rumbling stomach. "We're almost out of provisions! We can't risk it."

"Is that...?" Balin peered closer.

At the head of the table, on a throne of interwoven branches entangled by deep red ivy, sat the woodland king. His colourless hair seemed to drag down and meld into his throne. On his head stood a crown of red berries and bleached skeletal groundcherry. He was accompanied on his left by a younger version of himself - though less regal, and far less an ancient intertwined part of the wood as he, yet wilder and more unbound by far - and the strange lady on his right. The woodland king had paid the dwarves no attention. He instead enjoyed his overview of his company, icily smiling as only an elf could.

Thorin hissed disdainfully.

"Thranduil."

"That's Thranduil?" Kíli and Fíli gaped in unison. When they heard each other talk at the same time, Kíli immediately turned to Fíli, and Fíli instantly looked away. The stories of Thranduil and his betrayal at the fall of Erebor were legendary. The elven king was loved by none of the dwarven world, but he wasn't hated more by anyone other than he was by their uncle, who had really taken their refusal to help the hardest of all.

None of the dwarves blamed him. They listened to him out of respect and took a step back. Even Bombur conceded. Bilbo was on his own when he strode forward in search for his food. "That was ages ago," he justified. He should have known that when it came to the king of the Mirkwood, no hunger, no matter how grave, could make the dwarves forget. That, and he'd just uttered a grave offense.

Dwalin roughly pulled him back. "Ages ago or yesterday, hobbit, you will do as you're told."

None of them paid attention to Kíli, who stood frozen in their midst, until he whispered, "She calls to me."

"Who does?" Gloin roused, while already taking out his axe. Just to be safe, of course. Kíli didn't reply to him. Fíli spoke in his stead, sorrow lacing itself invisibly around and through him and he prayed that nobody heard, "The lady who makes him feel love. _She_ calls to him."

Thorin shook his nephew's shoulders. Kíli refused to be pulled out of his trance. "Does she say anything? Kíli? Talk to me. Tell me. What is she doing?" If anything, it seemed like Thorin's shaking only pulled him further into himself. His eyes focused on nothing and his lips were parted. Kíli seemed to _listen_.

A wind rustled through the dry leaves overhead. His eyes glazed over. He smiled. It was wistful and sad and yet happy all at once. "She answers me."

Dori got nervous. He nudged Fíli, shifting from foot to foot. "What is happening?" he asked, "Is Kíli in danger?"

Fíli tried to look away. He couldn't. Despite what it did to him to witness it, didn't find it in him to pull away. No words could express how he wanted to hug Kíli right now and be there for him; how he wanted to tell him that he didn't need someone else to make him feel loved. Hadn't Fíli always tried so hard to make him feel at home? Wasn't he enough? "I don't think he is."

That there, that was the ugly truth. Despite his intentions and his pitiful ways of dealing with it, it was her who made him feel loved. Not him.

A roar burst through the silence of the woods. Thorin, it appeared, did not share Fíli's opinion. "Thranduil!" he called out, "Leave him alone! He has never born you ill!" Kíli at the same time started whispering quiet, unintelligible words. He didn't look at all perturbed by the discussion going on around him. The way he spoke and the smile that lay on his lips, they were delicate and intimate - not terrified as Thorin would have himself believe.

From the circle, Thranduil silently and questioningly turned his gaze towards the dwarf. He raised an eyebrow. In his eyes the dwarves could only find a mild, ages-old surprise. Then he turned to the lady next to him. She cast her eyes down at one word from her king.

Kíli's knees buckled.

"Tauriel," he whispered, astonished at his weakness even himself. "That's her name. She is Tauriel."

Fíli looked away and pushed the hurt deeper inside so it wouldn't reach the surface. 

Tauriel. So his downfall received a name and a face.

The lights blinked out again.

*****

The third time the lights came, neither Thranduil nor Tauriel were present among the gathering. Fíli could sense that Kíli was crestfallen when he saw, even though the rest of the dwarves read into it instead as an unspoken agreement that this time at last they were free to raid. Thorin led the unruly band of hungry dwarves into the midst of the lights with eagerness. He too must have felt the hunger burn. Or perhaps it was pent up rage at the sudden disappearance of Thranduil before Thorin had a chance to do anything about it.

But like the first time, the lights instantly dimmed and left them in even greater darkness than the times before. Bilbo started cursing Thorin for not taking more caution - these were elves, for all that was mighty, not some travellers' company with little knowledge of the wild. Thorin, unused to being spoken to like that, naturally started cursing right back, which brought Dwalin and Balin into the conversation as well - if it could even be called a conversation to have a hobbit and a dwarf blame each other for their lack of food.

"Oh, and now you pretend you didn't want to rush off into the lights before? _Venison_ , Bilbo. _And cinnamon_."

"At least I would have had the decency to ask! Not like you, you just plunge in, consequences be damned. Well. Consequences we have aplenty now. And food, none that I'm aware of."

"Bilbo..."

"Oh, back off Dwalin! This is between me and him!"

The dark and the inability to determine where everyone was apparently just what Bilbo needed. He continued to cuss and walk around with arms flaying madly with anger, and no-one could do a thing about it. Perhaps that was just it. Thorin simply would have no idea where to look for him, and Dwalin could threaten all he want; the same rules unfortunately applied for him. 

"Once we get out of these woods, Bilbo..."

"When? When will that be? We've been trapped here for too bloody long. Who knows how much longer it'll take yet? I for one am not looking to put my grave under a decaying forest, I'll have you know! But if we're not getting food, I don't see any other turn of events unfolding."

"How, hobbit, is this my fault?!"

"Well." Bilbo huffed. "You're our leader! And a damn lucky one at that. If I had a light with me right now, I would have wanted to study that contract over again. See if it says something about defamation by a leader's stupidity. I am entirely interested in the determined recompense."

Fíli awkwardly looked around. He wasn't the only one not to know what to say to this outburst that none of them were supposed to listen into; all of the dwarves were eerily quiet.

He felt a strange drowsiness creep up on him. Well, they wouldn't mind if he took a nap right now. They needed to wait until day to make it remotely possible to continue travel, and by the sounds of it Bilbo wasn't done tirading by far. Fíli sat down. He rested his shoulder against a tree and closed his eyes.

He might have thought it odd that the only one he heard for a while yet was Bilbo calling out Thorin, and _why won't you answer, coward that you are!_ and shuffling in the dark, before his wakefulness gave way and he pleasantly dozed off.

*****

When he came to, he was no longer in the forest. No branches swayed heavily, ominously creaking above him. There was soil under his hands, but it was damp - not dry and dead like the forest floor he had laid out his bedroll on countless nights before. He thought he remembered a waking moment, but only shards of the memory came back to him. Bilbo, with his sword in hand, singing through the forest as he hopped along. A song about spiders. 

Attercop. Attercop. 

As ridiculous as that memory turned out to be, Fíli was sure that it had to be a figment of his imagination. It still didn't explain why he was currently underground - there were roots sticking out of the ceiling; only being underground made sense, aside from a natural dwarven sense - and alone.

His feet dragged as he moved himself to the door. It was barred. This was a prison.

"Thorin?" he called out. "Kíli? Bilbo?"

No reply came. Not from any of his companions, at least.

The accent was lilting and flowed with rhythm. "Quiet, dwarf." Unmistakably elvish.

Fíli's eyes were wide. He pulled back from the bars before he sat down. What on earth had happened in those moments where he'd been asleep?

*****

Hours passed and day turned into night. Fíli wouldn't have kept track of time, if not for the fact that the red wisps of light that lit this otherworldly abode and the adjoining corridor for as far as he had been able to see, were brighter at night and the guards on duty elsewhere.

He was roused from his thoughts of escape by lightly padding footsteps, so light that they were barely there. They stopped in front of his cell and remained there. He rushed up and pressed his face against the bars to see.

The captain of the guards looked caught by surprise as she looked back into his eyes. Her expression soon changed to pleased, gentle even. 

That of Fíli only turned feral instead. Tauriel. Kíli's lady. "You," he spat out.

"Me?" her gentle demeanour turned into worried at once. Obviously she hadn't anticipated such animosity towards her person, rather instead the situation as a whole, so she took a step back and observed Fíli in the dark red hues of the passage. The colour seemed to further enhance the savageness of the wildwood elves, but there was little ferocity to be found in her. Whereas most of the others had a wild streak - untamed like animals or still like the ancient trees - Tauriel was like a combination of both, and yet none of it at the same time.

She was a guard, yet she sat next to Thranduil in his nightly feasts. If the stories were true, she was most likely the one to ride next to him and lead heir retinue during the wild hunts as well. She was a mystery by itself. It wasn't strange that Kíli had been drawn to her, Fíli thought. Even he found himself growing curious. He frowned when he caught himself thinking. No. He would not let that happem.

Tauriel explained herself. "I came to see how you were. Have you eaten well? We found you and your friends in the clutches of spiders. You were starved."

"Eaten?"

Fíli turned around. He blinked at the sight of a platter with fruit that he had completely overlooked in his worry about his earthen cell and the others. Tauriel smiled at him warmly. "I see. Eat some and be well rested. Thranduil will see you tomorrow. You need your strength."

"Thranduil?"

"You're in his domain," Tauriel explained as if it was obvious. "You have tried to steal food from us three times. You are our prisoners."

Fíli rattled the bars. "Where are the others?" he called out.

"They are safe, all twelve of them."

Twelve? Fíli pulled back. They were one short. The thought mulled over in his thoughts, trying to make sense of it. He could only think of one thing. His eyes were ablaze when he turned to her again. She shivered at the anger directed at her, but met his eyes squarely. "What did you do with Kíli? What have you done with my brother?"

Tauriel's countenance softened. "Your brother? And who would be...- Oh." She stepped back delicately. "I see. He is in a place not unlike this one," she spoke. Thranduil spoke with him yesterday. We have all of you guarded only so you cannot band together and plan anything unbecoming, although it is of no matter whether he is guarded or not. Once the doors of the woodland king's palace close, they cannot be reopened. I truly apologise, but I can't let you see him yet. But your brother does quite intrigue me." The last words were spoken with the same distant happiness that Kíli had worn on his lips the last few days.

"Stay away from him," he hissed.

"The care you bear for your kin is amenable, little dwarf." She looked him down as if she knew. He felt bared and his deepest secrets opened at her gaze, and shuddered. "Please heed my advice. Some food would do you good."

She left him at that, quite suddenly, and did not return or respond to his calls that they were not done talking yet, and what did Thranduil want with them, and they had _done nothing wrong_! Fíli sank down against the bars. None of those questions mattered, anyway. What mattered was that she had had access to Kíli - did that mean Kíli had access to her?

Twelve others were kept in the dungeons. Eleven dwarves, and then him. Twelve dwarves, one hobbit. Fíli was puzzled. Who was missing? He barely had time to rally his thoughts however, when a whisper interrupted him.

"Fíli."

"Who is this?"

"It's me. Bilbo."

Funny. There was no Bilbo to be seen anywhere. Fíli frowned. Thirteen dwarves. No hobbit. His thoughts pulled him back, quite sure that since he didn't see a hobbit, no hobbit was in fact there, until the whisper became quite impatient indeed.

"Look, I can go if you're not going to listen. There are still others I need to find. Suit yourself."

"Bilbo?"

"Well, yes. Why would I call myself Bilbo and not be him? That seems a bit odd."

Fíli peered into the corridor. His voice dropped to a whisper as well. It would not do to alert Tauriel, or any of her guard for that matter. "Where are you?"

"That's of no matter. I'm here."

"Will you get us out of here?"

"... I'm still working on that part."

"Bilbo."

"I don't have a plan, alright!" hissed the hobbit, who was by now beginning to get really frustrated. "This place is impenetrable. I'm still looking for a way out. Listen. The others are all here. They scattered us, but not to worry. The elves can't see me either. While I'm looking for an exit, I can slip you food and such. Don't tell Thranduil about me when he asks for you though."

Right. Thranduil. In the rush of things, he'd nearly forgotten that new bit of information. "What happens tomorrow?"

Bilbo let out a small "Meh", like it was no deal. He was probably currently shrugging his shoulders too. He was entirely too lightweighted about the situation, Fíli thought, until Bilbo said, "Just don't say anything. He is going to demand answers. No-one's given any yet, though Kíli's impudence certainly got his legs in a twist. I always thought elves were composed. It was quite amusing, really, but oh, that's not what I mean to say at all! Stop distracting me! He won't do anything bad. He'll just throw you back into your cell and give you food. I rather expected something worse from him, what with Thorin's stories about the big bad wolf of the woods and all."

"Oh." Fíli looked aback. "So it's nothing to be worried about?"

"Nope. Alright. I've got to go now. I will return soon. A word of advice, Fíli? Do eat some. She was right about that, and it's actually quite good food. Not, you know, poisoned or anything."

With that, Fíli thought he heard someone leave, yet he saw nothing when he looked into the corridor. A burglar indeed. Gandalf really had the right of it. He blinked. "Wait!" he hissed.

"Mh?" Bilbo was closer than he had expected when he answered.

"How's my brother doing?"

"Kíli? Oh. Wouldn't worry about him, he's doing fine." Fíli imagined Bilbo waving his hand about casually. Then he paused. "Actually," his voice turned a little sad, "It depends on how you determine 'fine', I suppose. Fine for you, or fine for your brother?"

"Do I want to know, Bilbo?"

"Not so fine for you," Bilbo bit his lip. "I'm sorry. Balin saw when we were guests at Beorn's dwelling, and I happened to be awake when he told the others to sleep elsewhere."

The others? "Who knows?" Fíli's blood ran cold.

"Uh. Dwalin already knew, I think. He was rather smug about it all, going on about 'finally' and ''twas about time!'. Bifur. Bofur. Ori, but I think he forgot. That wasn't his brightest night."

"Thorin?"

"Nope. I think he was passed out around that time."

Thank goodness. Thorin was not among them. And those who had been awake, Fíli could manage that. They weren't the worst. Bilbo repeated on a quieter note as pulled his thoughts back. "Not so fine for you, Fíli. I'm sorry. I don't know anything about dwarven customs, but you two always made me laugh. If anyone, well," and he stopped that sentence short. "Look, how about I deliver him a message?"

Fíli just did not know what to say. People knew. But it was too late. If even Bilbo said that it didn't look good, then most likely Kíli's heart was already lost to him. He pinched his eyes shut to pull himself together. When he at last breathed out, he nodded his head.

"Tell him he should never be sad. Tell him that if he's happy, I will be too."

Bilbo would probably have raised an eyebrow then and there, for his reply came out rather dry. "Noble of you. A tad melodramatic though. How about, 'I need to tell you something. Please hang in there until we're out of this place'?"

Fíli chuckled. He just couldn't help himself. Enough stress had been loaded onto his heart as it were, and the lightness was much appreciated.

"How about I let you do the talking?" he offered. "You seem to know exactly what to say. Be the best burglar the world has ever seen, Bilbo. Steal him back for me."

It was worth a try, he thought as he listened to Bilbo making off.


	9. Chapter 9

The days were long and dark, and hardly different from the nights. Fíli was left waiting for days before Bilbo returned to him. No other visitors had talked to him in the mean time. He supposed he could consider himself grateful for that, because he wouldn't know what he'd do if Tauriel chose to speak to him again, and the other guards, well, he doubted they had anything other than snide remarks to say to him anyway.

For the duration of time he'd already been separated from Kíli in the dark dungeons of the Mirkwood king, Tauriel had become somewhat of an embodiment of all that was wrong between him and his brother. A very large part of that consisted of them not having been able to see each other. Even when they fought, it was unnatural for them to go without each other for more than a day. Their stubbornness never lasted that long. Fíli longed to see his brother badly. It may not have been fair of the elven lady who had never done him any harm, but he blamed her at least partly for it.

Thranduil's questioning... Well, that hadn't been much of a questioning at all. Bilbo had had the right of it. Thranduil himself hadn't even been present. Instead it was an older elf, no doubt one of his select few right hands, who asked him question after question, to which he refused to respond. Once the elder had intended to strike Fíli for the particularly disrespectful way he had spat at the floor in reply, but then the younger overseer of the interrogation - the younger mirror image of Thranduil, who looked like he had better things to do than to be wasting his time here - had said, "Elador! Hold your hand. You are not to harm him. Prisoners as they are, they are also our guests."

The young elf had turned to Fíli then and added, "As for you, child dwarf, it would be in your best interest to cooperate."

Of course, after his inquisitor had just been told off for harming him, that 'best interest' really didn't mean so much anymore to Fíli, who had continued his silence onward and been returned to his cell not too long after.

They'd gotten nothing out of him.

When Bilbo finally returned to Fíli, he was close to falling asleep. With little else to do, he had taken to simply resting and eating all day. It certainly beat the alternative of thinking. The small rock that bounced off of his back made him turn around. He grinned. "What took you so long?"

"Are you serious? There's twelve dwarves locked up here, and I just found out where they keep the thirteenth. I'm sorry it doesn't look like I'm doing much, but I can assure you..."

"Thorin!"

"Mm-hm," Bilbo proudly hummed. "He's a little further down in the dungeons, and they guard him intensely. But he's healthy and they treat him well enough, even if Thranduil won't leave him alone and abstains him from sleep frequently on purpose. He thinks that might break him to speak up."

In other words, Fíli thought bitterly, they were torturing him. "Does he know of the others? Did you talk to him too?"

"I did. He's very worried about you and Kíli. He asked me to tell you he is well, and hang in there. I've got more news."

Bilbo was still invisible. While Fíli still thought it was strange, since his uncle had successfully talked to Bilbo, he supposed he could ignore it a little longer himself too. He wondered if Bilbo and Thorin's first words had been nice, or rather a continuation of their previous clash in the woods. Bilbo's voice betrayed no frustration; that should tell him something. Good.

"I think I've found a way out."

At that, Fíli got up and hurried to the bars. "What was that?" he asked, like his ears were betraying him, "Did I hear you right?"

"A stream runs deep under the fortress. They use it to transport goods to and from a place further downstream."

Fíli grunted. So much for an escape route. "An underground stream. And you want us to use it how? Our equipment is heavy, nor have we got gills if we somehow managed to not sink to the bottom of the stream by weight alone. We wouldn't survive that."

Bilbo laughed. He was silent then, probably looking around if anyone heard, before he spoke up again. "They transport using barrels. Upstream, which means here, they come in full with wine, and tradables, and other things that the forest doesn't provide. The barrels are then sent downstream to follow the river current and return to the other place." He paused for effect. "Empty."

"Empty."

This could yet work.

"Can you get us out?"

"I'm a burglar, am I not?" Bilbo huffed indignantly. The truth that Fíli didn't know was that, while invisible, he'd stolen a set of keys from a sleeping guard - hardly the stuff of legends. It couldn't hurt to keep that part out though. You know, for morale. "Be ready tonight. I'll come back then." He made to shuffle away. Fíli listened to where the noise came from and grabbed blindly in the dark. "Wait!" He was amazed at what he found. In his hand he clutched an invisible travel cloak. It was Bilbo's all right; no dwarf in their right mind would wear a cloak lined with velvet. The hobbit spluttered. "Did you talk to Kíli?"

The stress on the cape decreased. Bilbo had walked back a little, then. Fíli let go of him, not wanting to give him any reason to leave now.

It sounded like Bilbo sat down.

"I talked to him about you."

"... And?"

"As a matter of fact, we talked for a long time. There were no guards, and I believe your brother quite lost track of time. I didn't, you know, _tell_ him. We just talked about you."

They gossiped about him, Fíli deducted.

Unaware of the thought, Bilbo continued. "He really misses you. He said he was wrong to tell you he hated you. He asked me to tell you that he doesn't. He doesn't hate you, that is. You upset him greatly, and in his anger he said something he's regretted ever since. And then when he tried to tell you he didn't mean it, you started avoiding him. He didn't understand that either, like he says he doesn't understand a lot of how you've been acting since you kissed him - he didn't say that, actually, but he did mention it was Beorn's place and you two got really drunk, so I put two and two together myself. He doesn't know I know, by the way. I've been very discreet. Now, where was I? Ah, yes.

"For a while he said he thought that if this was going to be the way, with you not even looking at him anymore, then he'd really have to start hating you, because he didn't know how else to take it." Bilbo spoke with sadness. Fíli's heart wrenched at the words. All this time he'd been thinking mostly about himself, but Kíli remembered the night in Beorn's abode, and it only occurred to him now how confusing it must have been to first be kissed by him and the next time, when he asked to be kissed again, to be rejected for it.

Of course Fíli had his doubt to thank for that. But Dwalin truly had been right; if he hadn't been so much of a coward, Kíli wouldn't have ever been hurt by his cursed indecision and none of this would have happened.

"Thank you," he whispered, "That means a lot to me."

"I know," said Bilbo. "It's just... you really hurt him. He wants to repair that, but I'm afraid to say it's also hurting him less and less, because someone else makes him feel loved."

"The captain of the guard." Fíli was afraid of that.

"So," he hobbit fidgeted, "Oh, I'm so sorry, Fíli. I couldn't steal him away for you. She makes him smile, and it just wouldn't be fair to try and steal something that makes him happy. In the end I thought it best to make him remember the things that made him smile about you as well. I didn't expect us to talk for so long. Kíli, uh, he told a lot of things about you when we talked. Things I shouldn't even know - things I think Thorin doesn't even know."

Ah. Yes, that would have undoubtedly happened. Fíli pinched his nose. He ran a hand through his hair, carefully avoiding the braids. "Did it work?" he asked.

"Meh," Bilbo wobbled his head from side to side, as if wagering. But he smiled - unseen in the dark behind the veil of the ring, but there in his voice nonetheless. "I think you might just stand a chance, if you play it right. Given that we get out of here soon and you don't go and screw it all up again once we do. Oh, and I promise I won't tell anyone about that time Kíli got lost, or the time you followed Thorin around."

If he played it right. A spark of hope returned to Fíli's chest. Thranduil's dungeons lost a little of their oppressive heaviness.

That time Kíli got lost. He even smiled at it himself.

"Get going now, mister Baggins. I believe you have an escape to orchestrate."

 

*****

 

Almost a day later, soaked to the marrow and heaving to once again fill their lungs with fresh air, thirteen dwarves and a hobbit crept upon the shore of the Long Lake. Fíli's heart beat at three times its normal rate. He thought he was going to die, stuffed in only a poorly floating barrel that had kept trying to tip him over and into the icy cold rage of the forest river for too long.

In his stress at staying alive, he had paid no attention to how Mirkwood's prison fell further and further away behind them until it turned into only a speck on the horizon through a peephole in the barrel - he had seen the peephole alright, but he'd been rather busy trying to keep it from spilling water inside the barrel by keeping a finger jammed into it at all times instead. Nor had he seen the nightly sky overhead, dotted with its peaceful stars and a few gray tufts of clouds, welcoming their return to the world of the living; not until Ori gaped and looked up and cried out, "Look! The sky! Oh, I've missed it!"

Even gruff Dwalin laughed at that, before he returned to cursing the cold of winter's touch. They had been in the forest for longer than they'd thought.

They were all drenched to their bones when they stood on the shore, shivering and swaying on their weak knees. Bilbo looked the best out of everyone. Naturally so. He'd been the only one to keep watch over the barrels as they had floated down the stream and were bound into rafters during a stop underway. When he'd finally, in the strange town on poles that they had heard called Lake-town, unbound their barrels from the rafters and freed them one by one, he had spent considerably less time holed up in leaky, rolling prisons than the others.

Thorin still glared at him for all of it, but even he was visibly glad.

Bombur, unfortunately, turned out to suffer from sea sickness. He glared at anybody who got in his way or made a comment about the state of his barrel.

Fíli's eyes strayed. The town on poles expanded proudly in the middle of the Long Lake delta, rather than on its shores like any normal river village would. A large bridge prominently connected two parts of it. Behind it, solemn as in the stories, towered the majestic heights of the Lonely Mountain.

Home. It called to them.

Bilbo came up next to him when he looked up. He too admired the sight for a short moment, until Fíli turned to him and asked him, "Yes?"

"You're welcome," smiled Bilbo. For getting them out. No-one had seen fit to thank him yet. He didn't seem to mind that, really. "It's quite a sight, your mountain. It doesn't look as menacing as I thought it would."

"It's not the mountain that's menacing," they suddenly found Thorin standing next to them.

"Well, yes. Of course. I'm just saying, it doesn't look like I thought it would."

Thorin raised a brow. "And how, pray tell, did you think it would look?"

There they'd go again. Bilbo must have predicted the same turn of events, for he turned to Fíli and rolled his eyes, before he said what he came there to say - while there was still time to say it. "I think your brother could use a hand."

Kíli.

Fíli immediately whisked around to look for him. He didn't see him at first, with all the dwarves bustling about like an ant colony, trying to ascertain if everyone was well and in one piece. But Kíli was the only one who didn't move and who did not look at the mountain, but stood turned the other direction. He looked at the echo of the forest. His hands hung limply next to his drenched body, shivering all over but ignoring the way cold gripped his skin, deep as he was in thought. He looked lost.

When Fíli pulled him out of his thoughts and into a tight hug, Kíli buried his face against his brother's shoulder and dug his fingertips through archer's gloves and cloaks and tunics sharply into his shoulder blades. Silently, he shook.

No words passed between them. But Fíli knew, and he only held him tighter. Kíli cried for his loss.

 

*****

 

Lake-town was warm and inviting. After Thorin had announced himself as the heir of Durin, come to rid the land of the dragon Smaug - if the threat of the dragon still existed - and reclaim the lost city of Erabor, quite spectacularly in the midst of a feast, they had been given great hospitability in the town of men.

All of them were in lodgings to their own taste. Bilbo had a room to himself, just the way he liked it. Nori, Dori and Ori shared a larger room between the three of them. Dwalin slept alone, though his room was adjacent to Balin's by request, and Glóin and Oin were not too far away from them in a spacious room all by themselves.

When the question was asked, Fíli and Kíli had looked at each other awkwardly before deciding that sleeping separately was probably for the best. They were given the accommodations befitting family; with a door to open between their separate rooms when needed. While that should have given them the chance to eventually reconcile and continue from there on in the same room, Thorin then professed an interest in sharing one of their rooms to make up for lost time with his kin; and inadvertently wedged himself right in the middle of all of Fíli's good intentions.

In the end, Fíli knocked on Bilbo's door the second night, at a loss. The door opened up to a very cosy looking hobbit in a warm nightshirt too large for his frame, most likely originally intended for a human child, and a girl too by the soft, frilly look of it. Fíli looked him over and blinked. Bilbo, pipe in hand, returned him a disapproving frown before he stepped aside and let him in.

"It's late," he said.

"I can't talk to him, Bilbo!" Fíli burst out as soon as the doors closed and gave them privacy. "Whenever I think we have time, Thorin enters the room or turns out to just have taken a bath when I thought he wasn't there, or someone else is around! How am I supposed to fix things like this?"

Bilbo, obviously overwhelmed by the outpour, just stood there as a few cinders of ash tumbled from his pipe. He cursed when a faint burning smell alerted him that the rug under his feet was beginning to smoulder and stepped on it with his hobbit's feet quickly. Fíli looked at that. "Doesn't that hurt?"

"What, this?" Bilbo raised his foot. "Nah. Us hobbits are used to a lot more."

"... Alright, then."

"Have you tried getting Dwalin to distract your uncle?"

Fíli nodded. Dwalin had said no. "You're a coward and you're on your own. Fix it yourself, it's your own mess," had been his exact words.

"Hm. Did you try when Thorin was in meeting with the mayor?"

"Kíli went with him."

Bilbo furrowed his brows. "Does he never get out of that room?"

Fíli sat down on Bilbo's bed and flung himself backwards with a sigh. "When he does, he makes sure no one knows where to follow him." Whenever he did, Kíli wanted to be alone. The hobbit didn't know any other suggestions, either. He sat down next to Fíli. "So," he asked, "Why come to me?"

 

*****

 

Bilbo did his best, he really did. Fíli could see that. While hobbits cared little for gold, and bribes were difficult to come up with when one needed to convince a sleepy hobbit for help, a bag of good quality pipe weed turned out to be the winning ticket.

The halfling chatted with Kíli frequently. More often than not, Kíli was left smiling at the end of it - once he even laughed. While sadness still gripped him since their escape from Mirkwood, he was getting there.

But Thorin was beginning to frown on the number of times it was Bilbo returning Kíli to his room at the end of the night. Once, when Kíli was drunk and could barely support himself on his legs, the dwarf prince glared at Bilbo sharply and had asked, "What are your intentions with my sister's son, hobbit?" To which Bilbo had cheekily returned, "Making sure that he doesn't fall over and make a fool out of himself and his uncle." And well, hadn't that inspired another round of stinging words to fly back and forth?

It was the fourth night in Lake-town when Bilbo arrived at their doorstep and knocked, and didn't bring Kíli home. Instead, he asked for Fíli and proposed him to walk with him a while. It was a beautiful night, after all.

They stopped at the edge of the lake to overlook a small, secluded basin that was surrounded by trees and large boulders and lit by five small lights within a single lantern. Fíli was left wondering if the steam that billowed up from it meant that the hobbit wanted him to relax for once, when he turned and only then realised that Bilbo had snuck away unseen.

It wa a nice thought but, uninterested as he was in resting up, he was about to leave when a foot splashed into the water and a small laugh that could only be his brother's drew him back.

Kíli.

It sounded like his brother scrambled for purchase before stumbling straight into the water from the rocky edge and gasping loudly at the heat of the water. "Shit. Shit!" Fíli heard cursing. Had he said that aloud?

"Fíli," Kíli stared straight at him. The tips of his unbraided hair clung to the milky water; his eyes were wide. "What are you doing here?"

He shouldn't back out now. He really shouldn't, not now that he finally had his chance. Fíli gathered his wits and hoped he didn't sound as nervous as he felt as he called out, "Looking for you, actually! Mind if I join you?"

Kíli's silence was interpreted as an alright, for convenience's sake, and Fíli descended the pine bridge. He could have sat himself down on one of the boulders, or stayed at the edge of the thermal spring; all of those options would have given him plenty chance to talk. But he was tired of creating a rift between them. So he shed his clothes as quick as he could at the entrance of the bath - Kíli didn't look at him once - and stepped into the hot water.

They were silent for a long time. Fíli looked at the towering mountain whenever he felt like he was staring at Kíli for too long, and Kíli just didn't look at him at all. Fíli wasn't too fair on him either, for that matter. He conveniently enjoyed the heat of the water standing near the entrance so he continually blocked the younger from getting out and running off.

In the end, Kíli spoke first.

"Did Bilbo talk to you when we were prisoners?" he asked. He still didn't look at him.

Fíli looked up at the stars overhead. "He did," he said.

"I..." a pause, "I don't hate you. I'm sorry I said that. I don't know what came over me."

Fíli's world was infinitely better when it wasn't Bilbo telling him that. He smiled; the confession made him warm inside. "I know," he said back. "I made you angry."

Kíli looked at him now. His expression bore so much sadness, so much hurt that Fíli had always vowed to protect him from. He wanted to hold him close. At the same time, Kíli's skin was damp and his hair clung to his lips and cheeks, and the heat did things to his features that made Fíli glad that the water was a turbid greenish white and as such didn't reveal the current state of his unravelling. It was better not to pull him close right now. "I'm sorry for everything I did to upset you, Kíli," he said from his small distance.

Kíli nodded. He turned and waded to the lantern at the far end of the pool. Two wet fingertips quenched the flames one by one, until only the dark remained.

Readjusting to the darkness, Fíli couldn't see for a minute. He heard the water bend around Kíli's form as he came closer though, and by then their natural dwarven sight was starting to kick in again. He remembered the ritual from a long time ago. Whenever Kíli was upset, he had killed the lights, probably because he didn't want to be seen and judged for his open display of emotions. Fíli wasn't too alarmed that he did it again this night.

His brother's words were quieter but more at ease now.

"Do you regret it?" he asked.

Fíli closed his eyes.

"Only in how I made you feel."

He heard a quiet, elated laugh not too far from him. It sounded frayed along the edges.

"So many times I've looked at the river and cursed it for taking me away," Kíli leaned back against the weight of the water until he nearly floated, "I can't stop thinking that a lifetime of being prisoner would be better than _this_. Than being where she's not. She made the world peaceful. Happy. You, and I truly don't mean it badly, but you made everything hurt. How is it that the feeling should have been the same, and yet it was so different?"

Fíli's breath was hoarse when Kíli came within an arm's reach. "She had nothing to lose." As the words were revealed to the cool night sky, he knew them to be the truth. "And I was a coward."

Kíli trembled when he spoke again.

"I miss her happiness so much, Fíli. She made me feel loved. Without that feeling, everything's just a poor shadow of how things _should_ be. Ought to be. I can't stop thinking about it." Kíli's hands reached up to cup Fíli's chin until they tangled in his hair. His hands shook. "It's unbearable." Kíli pulled himself closer in the water until they aligned, and tipped his head forward. His dark eyes fluttered shut. Kíli's breath skimmed Fíli's lips when he whispered, "Would you kiss me?"

Fíli's heart broke into stinging shrapnel.

"Until the world turns gray," he breathed, "But only if it's me you want to kiss." He couldn't bear to be a substitute.

Fingers clutched at his cheeks. Kíli shook his head. "It's not," and Fíli heard it now - the pained gasp within the younger, because he knew what he asked and what he was putting his brother through, and the frantic manner in which he clung to him. "I'm so sorry, Fíli, so very sorry. Please, this once, and I will never ask it again," Kíli pleaded in tears, "It hurts so much. I need you."

He had thought it couldn't get worse, until it did. The seconds between them felt like hours. Big eyes stared at him, pleading with him.

There was only hurt when Fíli pressed his lips against Kíli's and kissed him, kissed him until the heat went out of the water and his brother stopped crying.

In all of the world nothing had ever felt so wrong.

He thought it was an abomination, the fleeting thought of seizing this last chance. It wasn't a last chance. It wasn't even a chance. It was painful and gut-wrenching, and it seemed to hurt both of them more than it made them feel better. Kíli, who thought of Tauriel and yet asked this of his brother, fully knowing, and Fíli, who knew all of that and yet gave in.

It was the only way for him to make his brother forget, he thought.

But he was tired of them being only miserable.

And once they would break away from this, leaving with such sour emotions between them, things would never be right again.

So when Kíli's tears dried and his breathing slowed down, Fíli did not part from him. Kíli moved to pull away, once, unsure of continuing. Fíli instead moved in and captured his lips into a softer, slower kiss. This one, at least, might still have Tauriel etched on his brother's mind, but would be something nice to be shared between them alone, and not her, for a change. Even if Kíli only needed it for comfort.

Kíli sighed into the kiss however and opened up to him. He let his hands run freely through blond hair, his body curving into Fíli's on its own accord and some of the tension seeped out of his body. There was no urgency. Fíli took it as acceptance. He smiled around Kíli's lips. This was his love, pure and unruly and difficult. If this was to be their last kiss, then he wanted Kíli to know.

In a way, he hadn't expected to be given so much time. When at last they pulled apart, so gently, their skin was wrinkled and their lips were slightly raw. Kíli stared at him. Something illegible lurked in the darkest reaches of his surprised eyes, something incredibly potent. Confusion, perhaps. But no, it was not more than that.

Fíli's lips pulled up at the corners. He offered a last light kiss. When he breathed, "I have to go now, Kíli," Kíli nodded mutely, overwhelmed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh, I've taken some slight liberties with the story during the Mirkwood and the Long Lake parts. It's in the details, really, but please bear with me if you think, 'Wait a second now, that's not how it went!' Since you're probably right.
> 
> As always, I hope you liked reading it! Thanks for all the great comments.


	10. Chapter 10

"You again." A weary sigh.

From the opening of the door, someone tapped his foot. "It would seem so. I'm sorry, I'm not here to enjoy another conversation with you, much as I wouldn't miss out on our ravishing chats. Is Kíli there?"

Thorin stared down at Bilbo with as much contempt as he could muster on this early morning, but Bilbo - who had honestly had quite enough of this, thank you very much - looked straight past him and into the room that Thorin's broad stance tried to block.

"You are spending an awful lot of time with him lately, don't you think? Is there something I should know, hobbit?"

Bilbo groaned. From where he was still wrapped up in the sheets of the far too comfortable bed, sleeping late for once because he could, Fíli saw the beginnings of a major headache.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean," Bilbo blankly met Thorin's eyes. "Now if you would please answer."

From behind Thorin's back, Fíli decided to cut him some slack. He gestured left of his bed to the door that separated their room from the adjoining one, to offer a hint, as he hoisted himself up on one elbow. Kíli stayed in the other room, he tried to say. No need to bother with their uncle, who seemed to have another one of his famous moods at being woken too early. Bilbo thankfully caught on and gave Thorin a - slightly too deep and bordering on mocking - bow. Then he made off, right in the opposite direction that Fíli had pointed out, without waiting for Thorin to answer. Which, no doubt, was a ruse.

Ah. There it was, the faint rap on the door to his left, and the creak that accompanied the other door opening.

Thorin cringed. He heard it too.

"Is that...?" he asked Fíli, who just shrugged.

Bilbo's pipe weed had been well earned. He didn't need to spend more time with Kíli to talk to him and try to win him over; Fíli had told him what had happened at the spring the next morning, and their agreement had been settled. The pipe weed was pocketed, and the deal sealed. In a way, really, despite the outcome, Fíli was grateful of the small hobbit for taking him to Kíli and finally allowing them the chance to talk.

Instead, it was now Kíli who took the initiative to spend time with Bilbo instead. Since Bilbo made his brother laugh, all of the other dwarves were glad they did. The only one with a problem with it was unfortunately Thorin.

Fíli lay back into the pillows. He looked up at the timber roof and the coarse rafters. His feelings about his brother were still raw. Of course they were; they were rejected. But it wasn't all hurt. There was an answer now; the secret finally laid bare. There was closure, and the great weight he had carried on his shoulders for far too long felt lighter at last. Kili knew. They did their best to edge their way back into the old patterns that they used to share, step by step and bit by bit. Sure, they didn't share beds anymore, and the casual playfulness that had always been their trademark would take some time to restore indeed. But Kíli was mindful of Fíli's feelings now, and Fíli was similarly careful around Kíli. They worked on it. In time, they would be happy.

Times like now, when his thoughts strayed back to that kiss and he wanted nothing more than to do it again; those were the hardest times.

He rubbed his eyes and got up. Thorin was still brooding. Fíli eyed him with mild curiosity. It wasn't his business. And truth be told, there were a number of other things that were more appealing to him now than talking to his uncle. Nevertheless, he sat down opposite him at the small dinner table - it was a poor excuse for a table to eat on, since no more than four plates fit, and yet every residence within the human settlement seemed was this size or smaller - and looked him over.

"What troubles you?"

Thorin hadn't noticed him until he spoke. He looked up. The snarl still showed on his features, but at last he just sighed.

"It's the hobbit. He gets under my skin. I thought I'd been wrong in him, when he saved me from Azog and showed great courage. And yet ever since, he's been falling back into the pattern of questioning my authority and speaking up against me in front of the others. And now, now he spends so much time with Kíli. What am I to do about him? He's as unruly as a child."

Not impressed, Fíli pushed a mug forward and poured ale from a bottle for his uncle. Thorin took a mighty swig before he put the mug back on the table, emptied.

"I wouldn't worry about Kíli, uncle. He may not always look it, but he can look after himself. I would think he'd actually feel guilty if you spent your time worrying about him and Bilbo instead of making arrangements for our departure to the mountain. Erebor is not far now. It's what we waited so long for. It's our birthright." Fili patted him firmly on his shoulder once for comfort.

Thorin did light up slightly at those words. He gruffly nodded. His expression quickly turned sour again, however. "If only he would stop being such a sore hobbit and listen," he growled, to which Fíli poured him another drink, "I would have sent him home a long time ago, yet I have a sneaking suspicion Gandalf wants him to steal Erebor or its treasure back for us, and a wizard's wrath is not what I need when we move into the foothills."

He was probably going to get hell for this.

"You could be a little nicer to him, yourself."

Thorin's nostrils flared with anger.

"How about that? Time to go!" the younger grinned. He pushed himself up from the table, hands flat on the wood. "The men from the forge asked me for a favour yesterday, and since it's a good day to work the iron again, I gave them my word. Find me there if you need me. I will see you later."

That certainly deflated Thorin. "Fíli, wait," he called. Fíli stopped from where he was pulling on a boot, seated on the bed. The dwarven prince didn't say anything, but he looked lost.

He understood. It had to be hard for the king under the mountain, to state that he wanted to enjoy some time with his kin before they got down to the dragon, and their lives could be forfeit within a wisp of a second. Fíli smiled and gave a bow, before lacing up the other boot. "I'll ask Kíli if he sits with us at dinner."

 

*****

 

They managed to get Thorin drunk. While that by itself was enough of a feat, they also got him up to their rooms and into the single one with the door that connected their rooms perfectly locked.

Dwalin had looked at Fíli and Kíli oddly when - seated on either side of Thorin's makeshift throne at the head of the table - they had begun to pour him ale and more ale and told him stories of days past in the great hall, all the while not ceasing to collect empty caskets around them. Or, well, Fíli had started and Kíli, quick on the uptake, had seen a chance at mischief that he sorely needed and took that chance with both hands.

Their stories were enchanting. Kili spoke, and Fili added to that. Most of the dwarves listened and laughed or solemnly nodded, depending on the part of the story. It was like nothing had happened between them. Perhaps that was why, Fíli saw, those who knew about what had passed between the two of them laughed hardest.

When Thorin swayed in his seat, his limits reached and yet ale continued to be poured, Balin had at one point muttered at Kíli, "Don't you think he's had enough?" Dwalin had then thrown him such a filthy look that Fíli had quickly gotten up, pulled him apart from the rest and five minutes later, Dwalin's look was decidedly less unpleasant. It wasn't pleasant either, but it made do. Fíli was tired of Dwalin's constant disapproval. Kíli, unaware, had just grinned at Balin and poured him a large drink too. That ought to cheer him up better.

The drunken snores that refused to be blocked or even remotely diminished by the door separating their rooms made Fíli grin and Kíli laugh as they listened.

"How much did you think we gave him?" Kíli wondered.

"I'd say as much as he needed," came the smug reply.

Kíli pulled the sheets over his ears and peeked out from under them, not too sober himself - but in control. They were both sobbing wrecks when they got too wasted on ale, and so they had agreed to not go there for a while. It was thanks to Bilbo that managed to get them out and away from the hall before anyone noticed, that one time, really. "The drums of the deep will be nothing compared to his headache in the morning. I feel a little guilty. All he wanted to do was spend some time with us."

On the other bed, Fíli nodded. "Ah, but Bilbo knows a good remedy for headaches and weak stomachs."

Both beds were lined up with the walls of the small room. If Fíli reached out and Kíli did too, they would be able to touch hands. They were away from each other, and yet not at all. It was comfortable like this. With the lights out and only the light of the moon to filter through the curtains and bring then a sense of light, it was almost as if they were kids again, refusing to go to sleep when their mother told them to. The fact that they whispered even now as if they'd been up to no good only made it more similar.

The younger dwarf snorted a laugh from his side of the room. "But uncle won't let Bilbo ten feet near him. That'll be something to see. Maybe we should go back and tie him to the bed and then, when Bilbo comes to get him his remedy, he has no choice but to stay."

"You'll need to shut him up too. Don't forget that, or the whole of Lake-town will think we are gutting our uncle."

"Oh, right," Kíli had forgotten all about that, "But if we gag him, he's definitely going to kill us instead."

"Looks like he'll be stuck with the headache."

"Looks like he is."

A moment of pause was all that the room got, before they both burst out snorting. After a while that too wore down and Kíli grew quiet. He studied Fíli's features. There wasn't much that the moonlight showed him, for Fíli lay in the darker corner of the room, but he let Kíli look without making a sound.

After a few seconds of indulging his curiosity, Kíli snapped out of it. He closed his eyes. He let go of the breath that Fíli hadn't noticed he was holding. "Will you tell me a story?", and his voice was so small that Fíli hadn't the heart to say no. He understood. His brother's thoughts ran astray again.

"What kind of story do you want to hear?"

"I don't want to know. Tell me a story I don't know the end of."

That was easier said than done. Fíli frowned as he tried to think up one. Most of the stories he knew had been passed down from his mother or from Thorin, or if not by then, then by the companies they had joined in their lives - hunting parties for smaller game as well as the largest there ever was, holed up in the richest of hoards as it waited for them in the Lonely Mountain - and Fíli and Kíli had always listened to those stories with their shoulders leaning against one another, both one ear open to the story.

In the end he told a story that wasn't told before. It wasn't a love story. Nor did it feature death, or parting, or any of those themes. In fact, it was a terrible story, since Fíli made it up on the go and he had never been any decent at storytelling to begin with - let alone improvise on the spot. That was his brother's domain; he could imbue his voice with rage, or wonder, or whichever way fit the story best. Fíli's story, stilted at best, mixed in the light of the moon that shone down between them, the mountain that loomed before them, and it featured men rather than dwarves.

In fact, because they were men and not dwarves, and Fíli had never spent a long time with men in his life, the people were completely unconvincing. Fíli knew some about their world and short-lived lives, but not enough. Hence they ended up all running around without direction at the face of danger, and most of them plunged into the water headfirst whenever they thought they saw the shape of a dragon in the clouds. Which was why, Fíli said cleverly, most of the men who lived near the water had hair like sea weed.

Thorin, had he been listening, would have been aghast at his poor, comical rendition of the long history of the dragon, or at least according to his nephew.

Kíli, on the other hand, laughed and gasped at passages that were really pushing it, and may also have been hoping for Thorin not to wake up, because he kept whispering, without meaning it, "You can't say that!", and "Fíli, no!"

In the end, the unwanted thoughts were no longer there. They were replaced by a twinkle that Fíli realised he had missed.

"I'm so glad you're the only one to hear this story," he confessed. Anything to get back his brother's smile; and oh, had he missed it.

"It _is_ abysmal."

"Well, all the good stories were taken."

"If I walk down the bridge tomorrow, I'm going to picture this, you know. If I start laughing, it'll be your fault."

"I know you will. That's why I told you the story."

Kíli smiled warmly at that. He nodded. It went unsaid that they were going to get Thorin to give up on sharing a room with one of them the next day, too, be it by ale or any other method.

They might just be alright, Fíli thought.

The next day, Kíli did in fact burst out laughing, much to the offense of Thorin, who stood next to him and was in the middle of a very important discussion with one of the officials gathered around him when Kíli's poor composure finally fell.

Thorin attributed it to the many drinks they had the night before.

After that, getting their uncle drunk on ale was well and truly out of the question.

 

*****

 

Boisterous and full of smoke and ale - and men. That was the tavern summed up short. No dwarves had ventured out of the great hall to which they had been invited for dinner and the ale that came after and to which they were guests for a few nights now. As such, Fíli and Kíli got a number of curious stares when Fíli pushed open the door and they sauntered into the smoke-blurred darkness that seemed to be the Hollow Mountain. The name was a travesty; but inside there was laughter and the air was thick with smoke from the pipe, large wafting candles and the kitchen. They met the curiosity that was their due with ones of their own. Kíli's eyes got big when he took in his surroundings. This wasn't anything like the taverns they were used to.

Bilbo might have regretted being dragged along, if he wasn't too distracted with it all to notice how he became the centre of attention after the two dwarves settled down in a corner and miraculously blended in, used as they were to being travellers, as Bilbo was not. He stood out like a sore thumb.

"Are you sure Thorin said he won't mind?" the hobbit asked as he nervously looked around.

Kíli shrugged. "We didn't ask him."

Fíli finished, "Because we didn't think he'd approve."

Bilbo blanched. Before he had the ability and clarity of mind to turn around, he was pulled quite unceremoniously amidst their company by two strong hands, and then manoeuvred into a corner so his way out was now blocked by a table and two dwarves. Kíli grinned at him and called for the castellan to get them the best ale of the area, while Fíli ignored him similarly in order to take in their surroundings. "Cheer up," he smiled, "This is the best part of travelling. You get to see new places. You should enjoy it. We're getting closer to the dragon, if Smaug still lives at all. There might not be a better time to enjoy it than tonight. And we think," he gestured to Kíli and himself, "that the best way to get to know a culture is by learning about its drinking habits."

Which was just a fancy way of saying they had snuck out to get themselves unwound, without the others of Thorin's company there to tell the story the next morning.

Well, if put that way, it was a bit of an honour for Bilbo to have been asked along while the others remained in the Great Hall, unknowing.

"Think of it as an adventure," Fíli offered.

"Here's the first thing you're going to learn," Kíli said, and he shoved one large pint of ale in front of Bilbo.

"Finest of the house," said the castellan proudly. He didn't get outlandish folk like dwarves and hobbits to visit his tavern often. If they stayed long enough, or were entertaining enough to the men at present, the story would spread. Good for business, that's what they were.

Fíli was in high spirits. "Thank you, brave man," he offered with a dwarven politeness in return, before he sat back and enjoyed watching Bilbo put the too large mug against his lips as he tried to drink it properly. Just as soon as the castellan turned around to leave them, Fíli tipped the mug up with a hand. Bilbo coughed and spluttered and gulps billowed over the rim, down his jaw, straight into his fine waistcoat, or both.

The hobbit looked shocked, but Kíli supplemented with a roaring laughter, " _That's_ how you drink when you're one of us, Master Baggins!"

It didn't take long before their noise - for dwarves were a loud and rowdy lot - attracted a gathering of men and women alike. One of the women look an interest in Bilbo, who spluttered and didn't know how fast he could be on his best behaviour, until Fíli informed him that these kinds of shady places usually didn't attract any lady-like ladies, so he really shouldn't bother.

Bilbo turned red as a beet when he at last figured out what Fíli suggested.

Fíli and Kíli didn't plan to get drunk. Their last encounters had been painful enough to consider. They could try and get Bilbo to drink more than he could handle. The thought was alluring, and it crossed both minds around the same time without them talking it over. But they soon - upon discussing the opportunity behind Bilbo's back without him noticing in the slightest - decided that a hung-over Bilbo would be even worse than their uncle, and they decided against it.

So it happened that at the end of the night, the world around them was a blur of men who instantly forgot a word they'd said as soon as half a minute had passed, and a number of 'ladies' who were less inebriated - cunning as they were to earn money - surrounded the dwarves and the hobbit while they giggled at every word, while they themselves were still fairly bright of mind.

Between Fíli, whose heart belonged to his brother, and Kíli, whose heart was equally unavailable, the women vied for Kíli the longest. Fíli, slightly offended, treated it as a manner of honour. He did his best to get them to pay more attention. He made himself look broader and he offered them compliments that should have turned them into puddles of goo, had they been dwarven lasses, but disappointedly did nothing for them as they were human and had not a speck of noble behaviour at heart to sway them regardless. Kíli cast him an amused look, and continued to do nothing and earn all the attention.

"Give it up," Bilbo sighed in the end. "Your brother's more attractive, Fíli."

Kíli slung a hand over Bilbo's shoulder. "You're very right," he nodded.

"You would have lost, had they been dwarves," Fíli pointed out before downing half the mug in one go. The women took offense and stared at him before they shied closer to Kíli. Bilbo didn't believe it. "Oh, really?" said he, "I think that if they were dwarves, you still would have stood less chance."

"Nope!" Kíli unexpectedly broke in. "I'll have you know, he's actually right. My brother here is strong. He looks like he can protect his home. He's also skilful at the forge, and a heir to the line of Durin to top it off. Our women tend to look for that in a man. They're good values. Among us dwarves, he's a real catch."

Fíli looked away. It was just like Kíli to obliviously hurt him like that. It was a different thing from a casual remark altogether, to have the object of your affection state such a thing, and yet have turned him down.

When he looked back, he saw Kíli's face dropping as well. The younger had noticed. Weren't they here to have a good time? So Fíli put on his best mask and nudged his brother over Bilbo's shoulder. "We need more ale. Your turn. And take these women with you."

A formal but comical bow communicated between them that they were good.

Fíli and Bilbo watched as Kíli made off with two empty beer steins and sang a loud song while at it. Bilbo looked up at Fíli once he was out of sight. There was sadness in his eyes.

"I'm sorry they look at your brother."

Fíli blinked. Then he clapped a hand on his knee and burst into a chuckle. "Well, is that why you think I was sad?" he raised an eyebrow at him at last.

In the dark of the corner, there was no one there who was interested enough in eavesdropping. Fíli was beginning to understand why the younger dwarf liked darkness around him during difficult conversations. It was soothing, to feel like no one could see you. It almost made him feel like he was comfortably alone. Bilbo's voice crossed the distance to his ears with ease.

"It makes sense, doesn't it?"

"I was sad because he called me a real catch, Bilbo."

"Oh! I'm... sorry."

Yes, the dark certainly calmed him down. Fíli's words were mellow when he replied, "I would not fret about it. I've accepted it will not happen." He could see the hobbit perfectly clear if he turned his head, but he didn't. As such, he could picture him wrinkling his nose in confusion. Fíli smiled.

"But, you could have any one of these lasses," Bilbo suggested, "Even if they favour Kíli, I don't believe Kíli is very interested in them at all. Why not try and get some distraction?"

"You have much yet to learn about dwarves." Fíli paused. He leaned against the wall and sunk a little further into the slightly uncomfortable bench that ale had made him forget about. He thought for a good way to describe it. At last he nodded. For a moment, he forgot he was in a tavern.

"I know hobbits care little for riches, but I'm sure you're familiar with our kind's love for gold. You see Bilbo, to me Kíli is a treasure. But among this treasure, there is a small part that is locked away and for only one person to have. It's only a small part. But it's the part that burns brightest and most brilliantly. I have all of that other treasure, and a key, and it's a beautiful key, shaped by years and years of craft and care, and very special, but it won't open the lock that it was meant for. I bent the key when I tried to see if it fit, and now I will never know."

Fíli checked if Bilbo was still following him. A curled nod gestured him to go on.

"Now, I could throw away the key and miss it sorely, because it symbolises the chance I lost at opening the lock. I could also keep it and treasure it for as long as I can, because it too is part of the treasure, until in time it gets lost in the midst of other treasure. And I will be fine with that, because I might by then have forgotten about the lock, but I will still have my treasure. Do you see?"

Bilbo was deep in thought. Fíli looked at him with worried eyes. He'd never exactly told anyone those words, or the feelings that they represented, not in so many words; but when Bilbo looked up, there was the tiny beginning of a smile there that set him at ease.

"That's beautiful," he said at last.

"It should be," Fíli acquiesced. "But it is hard not to hoard a treasure when you see another making off with its greatest piece." He straightened up. "What about you, Master Baggins? Do you have a treasure waiting for you back at home?"

Bilbo huffed. "Not exactly. I was promised one fourteenth of the share, but that's ... hardly the treasure you're speaking of, is it? And that treasure belongs to Erebor. It has no place in the Shire."

The dwarf frowned. He didn't know how to read the sentence, confused if Bilbo was still speaking metaphorically or whether he had jumped to reality somewhere along the line. He didn't ponder on it for long. From the haze of the tavern Kíli stepped forward with two pints in his hands. The women were gone, and the look on his face also wasn't as cheerful as it was before. In fact, he looked slightly out of it.

"There you go," he said absent-mindedly. "You two take them. I think I'm heading home to get some rest."

"Did something happen?" Bilbo asked with worry. Kíli shook his head. He tried for a smile as good as he could, but he was distracted. "Just tired, that's all."

Fíli's own spirits dwindled too. He nodded quietly. "It's far. If you wait, I'll walk with you." The offer lay in there unspoken. For a moment he thought that Kíli was going to decline it; that he needed to be alone or somehow simply couldn't bear to be around him.

When Kíli chewed his lip, thought it over, and then nodded, "If you're quick about it", it felt a little like a victory.


	11. Chapter 11

The desolation of Smaug stretched out far and barren around them. With Lake-town only a day behind them, the company already longed to be back among its people and its welcoming hospitability. There was nothing welcoming about this new land. Out in the wild as they were, they were supposed to be in their element. Yet no-one felt any happier as they travelled the dry land. Smoke rose from the mountain like a warning sign for travellers. No grass grew on the outstretched plains that slowly turned into foothills. And aside from crow and raven, no other birds inhabited the realm.

Their meagre rations had not made the day any better, but it beat living on an empty stomach like they had been forced to in the Mirkwood. Bilbo tried to gather some weeds here and there. Some were still useable. Most of what he found however had lost any savoury quality a long time ago.

If there was one thing good about this ominous place, it was that there were dried weeds aplenty. As they marched on, most of the dwarves spent the sunny afternoon in the shades of their hoods and with a pipe in their hands. Bilbo tried to cheer up the group with a story of a long time ago, when he had first tried to smoke a pipe. He told about how his old man had found out and said he was doing it all wrong. And oh, how he had coughed when he finally did it right. "That was twenty years ago," he said with a sense of pride.

"I do keep forgetting how young you are, laddie," Balin said back, in a pensive mood while he enjoyed a particularly deep inhale and sighed out.

Fíli saw Kíli grin when Bilbo gaped with nothing left to say, and he smiled.

"Come, dwarves. Durin's day is almost upon us. We cannot linger," Thorin called out from the vanguard. They all tried to get more miles out of their travel for their leader's sake that day, though the wastelands did nothing to brighten any morale.

Bilbo walked up to Thorin. He tried to start some casual talk. Thorin, Fíli noticed, was not particularly interested. How could he be, anyway? The mountain, which was once his downfall and would be his legend many years after his mortal life had been lived, called out to him. He would only listen to the howling of the wind.

Kíli, well, Kíli was unusually quiet. He tried to find some fun when he spotted a rabbit, drew his bow and chased it until it hung over his shoulder to serve as food in the evening, pulling Fíli along with his sword and poor prowess when it came to fast game. But when that was over, and the other dwarves who had enjoyed watching them returned to their own contemplation one by one, he kept to himself again. Once or twice he glanced over his shoulder to see if he could still catch a silhouette of Lake-town and the Mirkwood, but they were well past the hills and so eventually he stopped trying.

The horses that the men had given them were used to this terrain. They continued steadfastly, stubborn by nature and not impressed by the tundra that was the desolation. That was until Thorin suddenly raised an arm and called out long and clear, "Halt!" His voice echoed over the empty land as he pulled his horse to a halt at the top of a high hill and turned around to face his companions. "Men," he then smiled and stepped aside, "Behold."

Over the hill, the heights of the Lonely Mountain rose. A number of miles before it, and within reach before nightfall if they made haste, laid the ruins of an ancient, once bustling city.

Balin unmounted when he caught side of the familiar scene. He almost looked weak and frail, like the years had finally caught up with him, as his knees refused to carry him and he stumbled. He regained his footing and then breathed in deeply. "Dale. I never thought I'd see the sight again in my life."

A hand squeezed his shoulder. "Nor did I, my friend," Thorin's voice was deep and rich in rapture, "Nor did I. We are close now."

While the elder dwarves came forward and their hearts filled with nostalgia and a sense of belonging, the younger among them were instead interested in looking down on the setting for so many of their finest stories; they had never seen the city before in their lives. "It's hard to think that was once a thriving town," Kíli said with disappointment when he finally managed to push himself up to the front enough to behold the sight. He had obviously expected more of it. Then he turned to Thorin. "Will you tell us a story about Dale tonight around the fire?" he asked.

Glóin butted in, "We even have a song about it, if Thorin will lead us in it."

"Oh yes, I would love to hear that one again," Bofur chimed in. "It's a wonderful song for the road."

Fíli smiled when Kíli's request started small and then built up into a wildfire among them that had them whispering excitedly and looking forward to the night. He thought he could make a song out of Kíli if he wanted to, right now. When Kíli caught him looking, the younger only grinned wider.

 

*****

 

Fire crackled. They tried to be careful not get the fire too big, because it was never wise to tempt a dragon with its own element while they were still undetected. Nevertheless, they all leaned against the crumbling walls as they dug deeper into their furs and talked with hushed merriment. This was Dale. It would not be long now.

Among dwarves, it was a bit of a ritual to have a song started by request. So Thorin got up with a sense of formality. He moved closer to the fire, and his eyes scanned the company. Most of them looked back with the same severity. Balin nodded. Then, he sang.

Next to Fíli, Kíli silenced. He followed each syllable of the song. It reverberated within his every fibre, so much did he love a good song, and Fíli could tell that more than once he glanced around himself to reimagine the world that their uncle sung of. He too could almost picture the running children down the cobbled streets, and the merchants who set up shop everywhere, and then the sun warming him up as if he was truly there, then, years ago. The song was a song of spring, when the world was still young and the days were prosperous. When Thorin paused, he noticed the first drops of snow floating down. The dwarves shielded themselves wherever they could under parts of roof in the ruin that were still intact. Fíli wondered if Dale would rise again to see another spring, when they took Erebor.

Kíli huddled a little closer into Fíli.

When the song finally ebbed away into the night, carried away by the cinders of the fire, the dwarves were silent.

As such, Kíli's whisper was unmistakable to his ears when it was muttered into Fíli's leather cloak, though none of the others seemed to hear. "Can I talk to you later?"

Fíli's eyes never left the fire. He was at peace when he inclined his head.

It took them close to an hour to get the chance to separate from the group; after their escapade in Lake-town, Thorin and the others had kept a most annoying close watch on them. Since nobody that night had known where they'd gone, everyone had gotten quite worried when by the end of the night there still was no sign of them. Thorin had at last found them fast asleep on Kíli's bed when he finally decided to look there instead of waiting for them in the great hall, and he may not have had the heart to wake them up while they slept so peacefully, but oh, they had been sorry in the morning.

This time, Kíli picked apart Balin when he thought no-one else was looking, and confided something that Fíli did not hear because he was too far away, but which Balin understood and nodded at, at once. He even seemed to shoo him on when Kíli didn't make enough haste to take his window of opportunity.

Dale was large. They could go anywhere they wanted and if they needed privacy; nothing was more accommodating than this place. The houses were still there, most of them, but they were all deserted. There were nooks and crevices everywhere. But Fíli didn't know what Kíli wanted to talk about, even if he thought he could take a wild guess - what with his brother's silence over the last couple of days - and he didn't want to risk being separated from the others in the case of an emergency. In front of a small tower house, barely any wider than a corridor and not too far from camp, Kíli stopped.

"Here."

Actually, Fíli realised it only now, all of this secrecy was getting rather odd. Kíli could tell him anything, anywhere. He didn't need to pick out a remote place like this. But even as he thought about it, Kíli was already bounding up the steps to the top of the tower and called after him, "Are you coming or what?" If it didn't sound like a challenge, well, he must have heard wrong.

The view that met him when he reached the top floor and looked out over the fallen city, and the pale blue hills that stretched out below them on one side of the slope, made him halt at the last of the steps.

Kíli turned from where he had pressed himself against one of the walls to take in all of the sight. He smiled. "Fíli. Look at it. Isn't it beautiful?"

The sight before him took his breath away indeed, but it had nothing to do with the scenery. "It is," Fíli said. He put his hands in his pockets against the cold, and perhaps to comfort himself.

"We'll march on tomorrow, forward until we reach Erebor and reclaim it or die trying. We might not see it ever again."

Fíli silenced. So that was it. The impending end of their journey. They did not know how it'd play out. They could not know if they would survive, and, if they did, if things would be the same. While its weight wore down on Fíli's shoulders too, he hadn't expected Kíli to take it so to heart; he was supposed to be the careless one, always rushing head first into danger. But, Fíli could see it now, Kíli was scared. He tried the best thing he could do to soothe him.

"You will see it again. I promise. In the mean time, commit it to memory, so you may always recall it when you want to. Remember the stones, worn by age and charred by fire, but cleansed from the soot by the rain. And think of this tower, almost intact." He kept talking because he was afraid what would happen if he stopped. "The land, dry but where once there was grass and there grew trees, as there will again. The sky, its...-"

"-... In the Mirkwood. When I said you kissed me," Kíli suddenly and almost violently nervously forced Fíli into silence. He breathed hard but then left it at that, because he looked for words and they wouldn't come.

Oh, no. He could not bear to hear anything about the woods right now.

"I know you didn't mean it," Fíli whispered, "It's alright." _Please don't talk about her._ He looked away.

"No!" Kíli struggled with his words. "You don't see! Please look at me. That was... that was important to me."

Fíli was about to say he was sorry. He had never wanted that to happen. They were so young, then. The words were on his lips. But when he looked at Kíli and saw the despair at not knowing what to say, not knowing _how_ to say what he wanted to say, he stilled. The memory was still fresh, torn open anew not long ago. How Kíli had used something he regretted doing more than anything - taking advantage of his younger brother one night while unaware that it was him - and thrown it at him in front of the others, at the same time painfully linking it to the times they had kissed... even if he didn't mean it when he implied that Fíli was a bad kisser and even if he was sorry for the way he used that memory as a weapon, it still hurt.

Kíli tried to continue. He was still at a loss. Eventually he looked away. "I was young then, but I need you to know. Before this quest comes to an end and I might never get the chance to tell you. I..." he reached for words, "I..." a flush spread to his face. It really was quite adorable, if Fíli wasn't so worried for the truth. "I had a little crush on you, the months after."

Oh.

"And then, you know, I thought I lost it. I was happy. We could be like brothers again, like we were supposed to be. But it wasn't lost. It just turned into something else. And then we were drunk, and you kissed me, and I thought... I really thought..."

_Oh._

Fíli's pulse hammered and he thought he was going to fall, for his knees nearly gave way. All of the pain he had tried and thought to have successfully sealed away again, all of it resurfaced. It felt like he was falling apart all over, just when he had thought he'd stitched himself up remotely decently.

"Why would you _tell_ me that?" he pleaded, "Don't you know how much it hurts, Kíli? Can't you see the damage you do?"

Kíli shook his head. "I'm sorry," he breathed. But Fíli had heard his apologies far too many times. They were becoming jarring. Not long from now, he knew that something was going to snap. Kíli did not keep silent, much as Fíli wanted him to. He seemed desperate to get his message further across. He dug his feet into the floor. "I... I loved you when you kissed me. I just, I need you to know that."

"You're cruel, brother," Fíli finally spoke, and he was surprised at how much loathing rang through in his voice. He cared little for the fact that it was still a confession, and it must have been hard for Kíli to even say it. Instead, there was anger. "It's the past. You would give me nothing but false hope, while you dream of someone else."

"I..."

"Yes?" bit Fíli.

And Kíli exploded. "I don't know, alright!" he yelled back, "I loved you and you turned me down and it hurt so much, and then she came along and she made me feel loved, but it's not as if feeling loved is the same thing as being in love, now is it?! Don't pretend you know what I'm going through! Don't tell me that I'm giving you nothing but false hope when I'm not even sure if it's just me fooling myself!" As he deflated, he sank to the ground. "All I know," and suddenly he sounded so frail, "is that I stopped dreaming of returning to the woods somewhere along the way, like an enchantment just wore off, or something, and it has been so for days so I know that it won't return again, and I thought that maybe you would want to know. _I_ wanted you to know."

"...Why?" Fíli was hoarse. "Don't you think you've hurt me enough? I will never have you."

Kíli leaned against the wall, broken. His eyes refused to meet Fíli's. His frame shook, and Fíli knew that his brother was trying hard to hold himself together. Kíli had hurt him enough. By all means he ought to walk away. But Fíli lingered, prisoner as he had become to these painful encounters. He hated how they kept hurting each other, and he was too angry to even listen to what the other was really saying.

Somehow though, the next words registered and hit home.

"I never wanted her."

This time around, Fíli truly stumbled back and against the opposite wall. The implications of that were just too large to bear, but also too large to ignore.

"You loved her." He took a chance.

"I did. But I don't think I was in love with her." Kíli pulled his shoulders up and brought his hands around his knees, trying to comfort himself. The result was a mask that tried to smile but twitched. "It's hard to describe. I thought about it a lot. She made me feel warm, and loved, and I longed to be loved. I loved being loved. But it was not directed at her, even if it was connected to her. It was more like she was the messenger. Maybe it was the woods, the feeling I'd never be happy again, or maybe I was hurt and it amplified what she made me feel. I know, because the feeling she gave me weakens more every day." He looked at Fíli, and chewed on a nail.

"Kíli..."

Kíli looked away once again, regretful. "I'm so sorry, Fíli. I meant to tell you something good tonight. But here we are, and I got my message across all wrong, and we're hurting each other again."

Fíli looked up. The night sky was peaceful, at least. It was down on the earth, here on the tiff level this guard tower, that his world was built on chaos. "What was your message, Kíli?" he asked, afraid to hope, "Don't wrap it in nice words. Just give it to me straight."

Kíli screwed his eyes shut. He collected his courage into a tiny bundle, then forced the words out before he could reconsider. "If you asked me the question again, if you would even want to ask me again after all that I've done to you, it would be you on my mind."

They sat silently at the top level of the tower; Kíli, with his guard down and wary of all that would happen, and Fíli, with large eyes that couldn't quite grasp how his anger was still throbbing through his veins, even now, and how long it took for it to ebb away when realisation finally came. When it did, he simply sat stunned. Kíli looked him over. He fidgeted. He was visibly sorry for strain he put on his brother. "I'm serious," he muttered far quieter, treating the words that mattered most to the other like they were a side note.

Sluggishly slow, Fíli felt himself get to his feet and stumble up. He sank down onto his knees in front of his brother. There, he looked at him for a long time. Kíli was an enigma. Even after decades he would confound him like that. Kíli wilted under the long state. "Fíli..." he whispered uncomfortably.

Everything slowed down at the verge.

Their noses touched. Fíli did not ask. Kíli had already answered anything he could have asked. He lingered there, his eyes falling shut after a few seconds, until the wait became unbearable and he at last spoke, laced with a hint of desperation, "Please don't leave me hanging."

Kíli flickered awake. His eyes blinked, startled. Yet he didn't move away, he didn't wake up from his haze and realise that this was not what he wanted. Nor were they drunk. Nor...- Nor, Kíli had said, was he in love with someone else.

All that remained, to make him sure that this was happening and it wasn't just a figment of his imagination, was for it to actually happen.

Kíli pressed his trembling lips up against Fíli's.

It was like coming home.

They sank into each other. Fíli cupped Kíli's jaw and pulled himself closer. Kíli, who had nowhere to go, caught as he was between him and the worn stone wall, pressed himself up. Soon Fíli found himself on his knees, the other's legs jumbled on both sides to give him more space, and he found he could not get enough of it.

His heart hammered in his throat. If this was a battle, he would have known how to answer that adrenaline call. But here, right here with Kíli saying yes, alright, he instead fought the urge to flee because he was so very afraid that it wasn't true. If he kept his eyes shut, he could pretend a little longer that this predicament wasn't so dangerous. The lips pulled away.

"Look at me, Fíli", Kíli whispered.

Fíli did.

Kíli's lips looked debauched. There was a twinkle in his eyes that he was sure he must have missed during their previous engagements. Underneath all of those layers however, he also found worry, fear and - most of all - there was hope. Kíli was fragile beyond anything else. He smiled only for him. Fíli thought it was beautiful. "Are you sure?" he asked again, because he couldn't handle any more misunderstandings.

"It's you," Kíli's breathy laugh echoed once off the walls before it slipped into the outstretching plains, after which silence took its place. Not even the usual sound of bugs or the howling of the wind accompanied them. The world held its breath.

"No turning back now," Fili tipped his head, assessing him. He had already decided that this was real though; the smile on his lips was telling.

Kili nodded vigorously. "I'm crossing the bridge."

Silence broke. Their lips clashed, while need pulled them closer, tried to get their hands under pieces of clothing, and had Fili press Kili against the wall, and Kili return the sentiment with equal enthusiasm when he managed to switch them around.

And then, from the wild, came the sound of galloping hooves.


	12. Chapter 12

Orcs.

Across the cold plains that lead up to Dale and the mountain that lay behind it, two shadows closed the distance fast. They rode under the cover of trees and tall grass wherever they could, but the plains were empty and they had to come out of hiding from time to time. When Fíli and Kíli spotted them, they were in plain sight. They rode fast, straight towards the city in ruins, but they seemed at least fearful enough of the mountain that lay behind it.

"Scouts," Fíli whispered.

Kíli was already reaching for his bow when his brother quickly put a hand on it to stop him. He pushed the bow down. "They may not have seen us," he warned, "We'll be trapped in these ruins with a pack on our necks if they notice and report back. We have to warn the others. There'll be enough time for arrows later."

Kíli nodded. He hesitated as he slung the bow back across his shoulders. Insecurity brimmed within him.

"Fíli."

Fíli, who was already at the steps to run down, stopped in his tracks.

"I know now is not the time," Kíli said, "But are we...?"

It was about the kiss - Fíli understood so at once when he saw how awkward Kíli looked. They shared kisses before, but those times had been different. Misunderstanding and unresolved issues had torn at them afterwards. Fíli would have wanted to strengthen their new understanding a little - or much - further, up in the tower, before they even thought about everything else. But now, with the scouts on their way, there was no time for that.

"You're mine."

Fíli could have said it differently, had he been given the time to think about his answer; now the words simply left his mouth. But he realised he quite liked the effect the tinge of possessiveness had on the other man. At once confidence replaced Kíli's awkwardness and a strange fire spread in his eyes instead. He nodded.

"Come on," he urged.

Fíli felt strange during their descent. There was fear and caution there; orcs were in their vicinity and every second counted while they ran for the others to hide in time. At the same time, his system was still burning up from what had passed between him and Kíli. His pulse - accelerated in desire - refused to be forced back to a beat that properly matched the peril they were in.

They reached the campfire before the orc scouts reached the outskirts of Dale. Kíli barged in and immediately hurried to put out the fire that sent plumes of smoke into the air without explanation. Thorin got to his feet at once at their sudden and inappropriately loud reappearance. "What is the meaning of this?!” he demanded.

Next to him, Dwalin too rose. His face wrote murder, entirely directed at Kíli's form; he was about to do something about this insolence if someone didn't stop him soon. Fíli noticed that the other dwarves, and Balin in particular - who knew why they had left - could make heads nor tails of it.

"Orc scouts," Fíli spoke at once, and he cursed himself for the traces of pleasure that wouldn't leave his system; he hoped nobody noticed. Now was not the time. "Two of them, South-East of Dale. They're on their way here as we speak. We don't have much time."

"Are you certain?" Thorin stepped closer.

"Very, I'm afraid."

And at once, the company was in uproar. Dwalin's anger dissipated. They hurried along, trying to pack things and looking around for shelter, but it was clear that - this close to the mountain - they hadn't expected a threat from the south and were ill prepared. Bombur tried to push people aside to get his belongings together, Balin scurried around for his packs and Bifur and Bofur were simply overwhelmed by the chaos.

"How well do you remember Dale?" Thorin demanded from Balin, who thought hard. "Places to hide? Secret passageways?"

"Yes, well, there were quite a few in the days," said Balin as he ran around gathering things, "but they're all in disuse. They could have collapsed, or worse, they could collapse on us when we use them in our haste if we’re not careful enough."

"What about the old mines?"

"Collapsed during Smaug's siege, I reckon."

"The merchant routes?"

"Excuse me? What about the ponies?" Bilbo called out over the noise, raising a hand to make his question at least a little polite.

They all stared at him for his reckless loudness. The truth was that Bilbo was barely any louder than the commotion of all dwarves combined, though he slunk in on himself at the force of the combined attention to his little person. His point was valid nonetheless.

Fíli and Kíli turned their eyes on him at once. Fíli cursed inwardly. They'd forgotten all about their mounts, tied up at the edge of the settlement. It was the mountain edge, all right, but even if there was a way for them to hide in one of the many recesses of Dale’s vestiges, their ponies certainly wouldn't pass undetected. "They are lost to us," Fíli said not without regret.

"Even so, they will know we are here and return to the others with that news."

"We must make for the mountain," said Glóin, "It's our only chance."

"And be trapped between orcs and a fire dragon, if there still is one?" Thorin glared, "This is Azog's pack, I am certain of it. I say we end this here and be done with it, once and for all."

While the other dwarves dared not say a word about Azog, in respect to their leader's attitude towards the Pale Orc, poor Bilbo did speak up. "And what if there are no eagles this time around? You'd risk your life and our quest to meet him in combat - and you will likely die, if you don't mind me saying so - while you're this close to your birthright? Because if you do, I will leave your company right here, try to survive this mess you're making and head home, contracts be damned, and you will have lost yourself a very fine burglar indeed."

Bilbo's mutiny, if you could call it mutiny, was met with more than one look of either hesitant disapproval or pity. None of the dwarves would have wanted to stand in his shoes right now, especially not when they glanced at Thorin and saw his fury rise with every one of the hobbit's syllables. Fíli was caught off guard while Kíli, next to him, stepped forward.

"I agree with Mister Baggins."

"Kíli," Thorin warned darkly.

"Well, what do you suggest?" Balin, who was entirely uninterested in a final stand against Azog, quickly waylaid Thorin's anger with a question of his own. Fíli quietly thanked him for the opportunity. There was little time, and less counting. He stood next to Kíli. "An ambush," he proposed. "Only the scouts. The pack will track their steps and come here eventually, that much we can't avoid. But it should buy us time to approach the mountain and set up a safe camp there, where they dare not tread, without rushing headlong into a dragon."

"Dale will be lost to us," Dwalin, who looked forward to wiping out a pack of orcs, rallied for his cause.

"For now, but we will live."

Thorin leaned back. He wasn't happy about his decision, but he was reasonable yet. Smaug was the real issue here, no matter how his blood thrummed for vengeance. "Do it," he said to his future heir to a lost empire. "If you're confident of your plan, bring them down."

 

*****

 

Kíli's bow took down the first one.

Perched from atop the same tower that he'd shared with Fíli only half an hour before, his aim was steady and his shot lethal. The warg under the orc growled when its rider toppled off him, and immediately the creature prepared to fight. No attackers met him. All of the dwarves were up on higher ground, hidden from sight and looking down at the scene. Their scent was undoubtedly going to attract the beasts eventually, but not while there was chaos.

The second orc hissed and immediately drew his weapons. His eyes scanned the ruined parapets of the city walls, then the rooftops, for the origin of the arrow. Finding none, he urged his warg to turn around and retreat, but the animal was unruly and it smelled blood. Kíli's arrow missed his shoulder by a hair; the second was deflected on the orc's leather-and-bone shield.

"Steady," Fíli whispered into his ear from behind.

The third arrow missed its mark so far that Bofur, Bilbo and Thorin turned their eyes on Kíli from their hiding places in surprise.

"Curse you, Fíli," Kíli groaned frustratedly, willing his body to stop shivering, and immediately notched another arrow in frustration. This one caught the warg in the flank. It let out a loud whine that could be heard for miles and would have drifted even further, if Thorin hadn't chosen that moment to send in his reinforcements.

Dwalin's blade made a gruesome end to the warg's suffering, and swung further in a blow that hacked into the other riderless mount. It wasn't a lethal blow, but it was distraction enough for others to swarm the remaining orc. Bifur and Bofur pulled the struggling rider off the warg. Glóin's axe, though sloppy and requiring four strikes, took care of the rest.

"I am needed," Fíli said. Kíli, focused as he could only get in the heat of battle, nodded distantly and readied for another aim. Fíli hurried down the steps and into the fray. He was just in time to see the warg fall to the side, and be put down. Its matted fur was riddled with arrows - Fíli felt particularly proud of Kíli at that point - but it was Thorin's blade cleaving his chest that had demanded the beast's life at last.

Fíli looked up at the tower. It was empty. Kíli was on his way down.

"To the mountain?" Bilbo, who had just come out of hiding, made himself known.

"To the mountain," spoke Thorin.

Fíli didn't quite understand the look his uncle gave Bilbo then. He expected it to be prideful and unforgiving, especially because it was Bilbo's insubordination that had led them to this point, and not something or someone else. Instead, he thought he found gratitude there.

It would take a long time indeed for him to understand Thorin's ways.

 

*****

 

The closer they got to the mountain, the more they took care to watch their steps. They tied the ponies to a secure location south of their first camp, and scouted the mountain side from there. Usually Fíli and Kíli took it on themselves to look for possible hidden passageways and entrances.

Once, with Bilbo in tow, they passed a trench from which steam billowed and a sulphuric vapour rose, and they all realised with a sinking heart that the dragon had not gone at all.

From their ranging, they learned that Dale had been taken by orcs from the morning after their escape to the mountain, and they took care not to be seen by any of them while they looked for doors into the mountain, hiding behind shrubs and concealing fissures.

The third camp they made on a small seclusion of grass that could not be seen from the foot of the mountain and was fairly shielded from the cold wind as well. On one side of the seclusion rose a large, flat slab of stone that couldn't be anything else than the fated door - Bilbo's discovery during one of their scouting trips - and yet they tried all day that day to get it open to no avail. Pick-axes wouldn't work, and hammers did nothing but jar the joints of the old miners, so that in the evening they all agreed that they needed a plan.

There was no fire that night; not so close to the halls of the mountains and its unwelcoming guardian wyrm.

Kíli huddled closer to Fíli in their combined bedroll. Fíli's body, as it had taken to doing since the night on the tower, reacted instantly to the warmth and the hot breath that skimmed his neck, and Kíli did dare to reach up for a kiss once, but he didn't press further than that.

"How are the others?" he asked Fíli in a whisper.

Fíli looked over his head from where it was burrowed against his chest. They already accomplished odd looks at the sudden return of their closeness and sharing a bed once again - hadn't they been at odds with each other since the house of Beorn? - but from the moment that Kíli physically started seeking him out to lie against him in a way that was slightly too intimate for brothers, they'd really gotten stares - especially out of the ones who didn't know.

Dwalin had scowled at first - undoubtedly believing it to be another one of Kíli's ploys - and then must have realised that this was good, and Fíli had finally done something about his predicament, and that Kíli belonged with him now. He had turned a blind eye ever since. But the others weren't quite so forgiving in their curiosity. Bilbo in particular hadn't been able to keep his eyes off of them. Although he'd expressly indicated that he was happy for them, that moment when Fíli caught him all alone by himself and told him, the look that he gave them whenever they found each other and took comfort in each other was almost wistful.

"Nobody's looking," Fíli ensured the younger one in his arms.

Kíli smiled. "Once we take back Erebor..." he said.

"We'll tell Thorin."

"Actually, I was going to suggest finding a place for ourselves," Kíli mused.

"That too." Fíli couldn't help but chuckle. It drew one glance, which quickly looked away again. Bilbo.

It was agony. Here Kíli had accepted him, and - more importantly - Fíli had accepted that there could be more between them, and that the ways in which he thought of the other were suddenly no longer inappropriate and unwanted but instead very viable options that could be acted upon if he wanted - and oh, he _wanted_ to act on them. But the situation gave them no chance to be alone with each other whatsoever. There was always someone around. And Thorin couldn't find out.

It meant that Fíli had been walking around for days, pretending that nothing was going on between them for their uncle's sake, while his body was continually on edge. Whenever Kíli brushed his hand or did anything that was typically Kíli - needless to say, that happened a lot - he wished he could ravish him, or kiss him, or at least do _something_. It was driving him crazy.

Worse was when Kíli, who must have been going through the same spell, started to realise the effects he was having on him and took to actively provoking him. He had to be. If not that, he swore he'd never seen his brother act so innocent. During the day he'd make casual remarks with far-reaching innuendos, and there was that one specific moment where he had worked hard to try and open the moon door with a pickaxe to give Bofur some time off, and had turned and given Fíli such a lingering, promising look while sweat clung to his hair and his skin that Fíli had inwardly cursed, excused himself and looked around for a place where he could hide away from the rest for a only short moment. He wasn't given a single minute to relieve himself.

Well, at least his quick escape from the camp - though not long and not nearly sufficient to help him get rid of his problem - told him that the orcs had given up Dale.

"It's cold," Kíli muttered slightly too loud and pulled the blankets all the way over them. Dwalin may have scoffed, and Bilbo's ears may have flushed; Balin had probably shaken his head with a good-natured sigh. The others didn't take notice. "I've been watching you," Kíli admitted under the cover.

Fíli's hands pulled up his chin until their faces were level. The air was heavy with all the things unspoken, before he couldn't stop himself and pulled in for a kiss. It was meant to be a relatively chaste one; it turned into fingers pulling at him with need. Kíli gave in all too willingly. He groaned, quietly, when their hips touched. "The things you do to me," Fíli breathed.

A tap against Fíli's side, which looked too much like a foot prodding him, brought them out of their private world. Fíli stopped. "What was that?" Kíli whispered to him. He was ready to push off the blankets and see for himself, if Fíli hadn't pushed a finger against his lips to still him.

"That'll be someone who would like to get some sleep and would appreciate it if you lads showed some discretion," Dwalin spoke from close by. He'd probably taken the spot closest to them.

Was that a proud tone he detected in the warrior's voice, there?

"We're sorry," muttered Kíli, who was rigid with shock and apparently hadn't noticed the hint of pride. Fíli watched with amusement as his expression turned from fear to open-mouthed confusion when Dwalin spoke back, "Hah, I should hope not." Still processing, Kíli wasn't fully aware of the next words until he gave them time to sink in. "Just don't let me catch you again unless you're ready to do this the proper way. Balin and me, we can't keep you out of Thorin's sight forever, you know. Now sleep, the two of you, so I can finally get some rest as well."

Kíli managed a meek "Yes, Dwalin." He curled up more decently against Fíli - that was to say, he less evidently pressed his body against him and turned in his hold until they lay together like they used to before the night at the tower.

Yes, myriads of possibilities were suddenly out there, Fíli thought bitterly as he closed his eyes and willed himself to catch sleep, but there were only few that were fit for a company on the road.


	13. Chapter 13

The dragon was dead.

Smaug, the Terrible, was dead.

Thorin couldn't grasp it. Nor could Fíli, who stood next to him when the news was delivered. They had all expected they were going to die here, in or around the mountain, when Bilbo returned from the tunnel behind the door with the news that the dragon was awake in its lair and was, far more than he'd expected, cunning. They had heard the awful roars at night, echoing through the otherwise empty halls of Erebor from its treasure hoard, and known. There would be no way out alive for them; at least not for quite a few of them.

So when they'd made for Dale again through the front entrance, running from the threat of the dragon without their trusted steeds who had unfortunately fallen to the red dragon, and waited with baited breath for a sign of their impending doom, and the first signs started to appear that things were not going to go as expected, the dwarves did not know what to do.

They had at least expected a fight. The retrieval of the dwarven capital from the clutches of a dragon was material enough for an epic, yet that epic would not be writ or wrung into song if no heroic actions accompanied it.

Thorin's company's heroic actions had been plentiful indeed, but trolls and goblins were no dragons, and Azog who lived, undefeated, was little worthy of being included in a song about a dragon not slain by dwarven hands.

"The mountain..." Thorin spoke, not quite believing.

"Is ours once again, my king," Balin came to his side.

They took no heed of Lake-town in the distance, where smoke rose from the waters and where the dragon had fallen - there was always smoke where fire and water met, so they thought nothing of it - so astounded were they by the outcome. And then, there was joy. Thorin laughed. He laughed until there were tears in his eyes, or perhaps there were tears in his eyes and he laughed because of them. Erebor was once again in dwarven hands.

There was no food in the halls that night; the feast held in honour of the recapture of the mountain was celebrated with cram and water from the mountain spring, with the sparse stock of ale that came with them from Lake-town being fairly distributed among all of them equally. But it was a rich feast nonetheless. Bilbo walked around awkwardly in his new mythril hauberk that obviously wasn't made for someone his size, and Ori lay amidst the cold of the treasure halls, simply covering himself with tiny discs of gold while he looked slightly delirious.

Glóin and Óin admired the weaponry that had been lost to them so long ago, and they eagerly picked up new axes to swing around and weigh. "Argh, my old trusty axe can't stand up against this perfect balance," Glóin bemoaned, to which Óin suggested he replace them, and Glóin was in deep thought about it for a long time after.

If some of them were missing, nobody noticed except Bilbo, whose love for gold captivated him far less than it did the other dwarves, Thorin included. But Bilbo knew not to say a word of his suspicions. He simply smiled to himself.

Fíli pressed Kíli roughly against one of the pillars of an unimportant, forgotten room, somewhere in the depths of the mountain. No-one was going to find them here. It was remote, and they'd taken care not to leave tracks when they'd made their way away from the celebration. Certainly, they were well over an hour into the mountain before they finally dared to stop.

"Take it off," Kíli tugged vigorously on one of Fíli's layers of clothing. He bemoaned the fact that when it came off, two more layers awaited them. Fíli hissed at the cold on his heated skin nonetheless; it was the heart of winter and the mountain halls were cold. He basked in his brother's enthusiasm, which he'd sorely missed in the months where they barely spoke. When he slipped his hands under Kíli's outer layers and tunics, he pulled everything up and off in one go, leaving Kíli bare-chested and shivering.

"Blasted cold," Kíli gasped, "You had better warm me up right now, Fíli, or I swear..."

"You swear what?" Fíli mused instead, and captured his lips in a searing kiss before Kíli could do anything about it. He couldn't help press his brother up against the pillar once again, and Kíli hissed at the intense cold that emanated from the stone.

To his surprise - but he should have known - Kíli refused to be handled so easily. He sank down and pulled Fíli along as they rolled on the floor and Kíli finally pinned him underneath him. "You give me no choice," he grinned with mischief. Even as Kíli tugged to get him at least partially naked to share in his discomfort, Fíli couldn't help but look at the sight and marvel at the other, straddling him without realising it himself, half of his clothes off of him. A sharp feeling of lust rushed down his lower abdomen.

"You are so beautiful," he whispered.

Kíli stopped moving. He looked back at Fíli. In all his enthusiasm and his need, the words hit home in a small centre that made him look terribly vulnerable. Fíli wanted to hold him close and never let him go.

"I'm sorry," Kíli apologised at last, quieted, and he looked down awkwardly, "I've thought about you like this so many times, I just never expected it to really happen. There are so many things I want to do to you right now that I don't know where to begin."

"Kiss me."

Kíli complied, and Fíli rolled them over. The ground under them was hard, but at least they had cloaks and many layers of discarded clothing for that. "How about the things," he breathed against Kíli's neck, "I want to do to you?"

"What about them?" Kíli breathed back, recovering surprisingly fast from a laboured groan that shot straight to Fíli's gut.

If they were in the mood for talk, he would have told him all of it and made a special effort to get Kíli fumbling for words. This was nor the time, nor the place. Plenty of time would there be for them left, now that Erebor was once again theirs and their journey at an end. So in the end Fíli didn't speak of it and simply took Kíli's lips in the tender kiss that the privacy of the remote chambers finally allowed.

They weren't sure how long they laid there, pillowed by layers of discarded clothing and with Kíli wearing Fíli's jacket because he couldn't get over the cold - despite the fact that it hung open whenever he sat on top and revealed expanses of flesh that Fíli found he loved to run his hands over, especially with the response he was given - when the deep hum of a horn roused them.

Kíli straightened up. "What was that?"

Fíli's head fell back against the clothes, and he closed his eyes. He knew what that was. It was never a bringer of good fortune, even less so when they were in the middle of things that they needed unless someone was seriously going to get hurt soon. "A war horn." That's what it was. His heart felt heavy. They were never going to be given enough time, it seemed.

"Oh, no," Kíli groaned, "No, no, no. Not now." He was again shivering, but this time it wasn't of the cold. He pulled the cloak closer around himself and bit his lip as he looked down at Fíli. "I'm sure it's Glóin having found a horn and wanting to try it."

It sounded again; that was definitely not Glóin.

While Kíli sat conflicted, Fíli pulled him down. The kiss they shared was demanding, and long, and when they parted they were both speechless for a short while. But he knew that they couldn't deny the summons of a war horn. He caught Kíli's lips once more - and had a hard time separating them again. "We should go," he said. "I'm sure it's nothing, but Thorin will ask questions if we don't answer it."

"What do you think it is? They said Smaug was dead."

Fíli sat up and started pulling clothes back on. He regretted his decision already, and for what? Kíli's guess was not so farfetched. They were all drunk, like as not. Glóin could have easily sounded a horn for fun. There were stranger things the dwarf had done while off his feet.

His brother demanded attention when he straddled him again and said, "No, Fíli. Don't go now. _I_ can't go now. They can't see me like this." He looked down into his lap. The trip back to the large halls was going to take about an hour, fifty minutes if they rushed it, but there was no way he could will his body to calm down.

It took all of Fíli's willpower not to ignore what they'd just heard and push him back into the clothes. He cupped his cheek. "Stay here," he said, "I'll be back as soon as I find out what's happened. You're safe here."

Kíli's eyes darkened. "I'm _safe_ here? Did you forget who I am? I can take care of myself just fine."

Fíli arched a brow and looked at Kíli's lap.

"Oh, no!" Kíli blew up, "You're not playing that card on me, Fíli."

Truth be told, with all these new distractions the war horn was slipping further and further to the back of his mind. When it blew again, Fíli hardly even registered it. It had to have been powerful indeed, to overshadow the sound of blood rushing to his ears when Kíli decided that well, he could get his way another way and shoved a hand down his own breeches, all the while challenging Fíli with his eyes to do something about it.

Fíli did something about it, all right. He was not proud of it, since they'd been working forward to this moment for weeks and now events had forced what was supposed to be meaningful and in every way memorable into a quick little number. Though he had to admit that it could have been worse, too. The way Kíli accepted Fíli's hand in place of his own and had leant his head against Fíli's shoulder as he panted; the way the idle hand soon found a purpose of his own as it snuck under Fíli's clothes and wrapped around him; and more than anything the way Kíli tried to regain his breath when he crashed down from his high and looked at him with blown eyes and a soul that was completely, unguardedly open - those were beautiful promises for when they did get the time.

Fíli wasn't sure how Kíli felt when they entered the great hall, but if it was anything like how he felt himself, he was most likely cursing whoever blew the horn to die an unfortunate death right now, and wished he could get away as soon as possible. Fíli was afraid they could read him like an open book.

"What's the matter?" he said with as much casualness as he could.

Thorin glared. He was walking from side to side, hands folded behind his back; something troubled him greatly. "Where were you?"

"Kíli said he found one of the ancestral tombs. He took me to see it." They did pass said ancestral tombs somewhere along the way. But neither of them had been very interested in anything that wasn't each other. They threw each other a glance. "We heard a war horn and came back as soon as we could."

Balin discreetly gestured to Kíli that one of his buttons was loose. Kíli quickly fixed it when Thorin didn't look and threw Balin a wide grin in thanks.

They were going to be found out.

"Men and elves," spat their uncle, for the moment blissfully unaware of his nephews' shift in priorities. "They are at our door. To rebuild Lake-town, which Smaug appeared to have laid to ashes, they demand a twelfth part of the treasure that, they claim, rightfully belongs to them."

"A filthy lie," said Glóin, who possessively held onto his new axe.

"Outrageous!" stated Dwalin, who boasted proudly of his new armour of the finest material. "We will have them know how we think of that!"

But Bilbo again hesitated. "They also say that Smaug took many of the treasures of Dale, which doesn't strike me as untrue. We did not see any things of worth when we were in Dale, and it's too far into the Desolation for others to have dared raid it."

"Dale is not Lake-town," said Thorin gruffly, "They have no claim to the treasure."

"Not even their leader, who claims he descends from Girion of Dale?"

"No-one lays a claim to what rightfully belongs to dwarves! Erebor has never been theirs. It was ours before it was Smaug's, and it is ours again."

"Well, they don't claim a twelfth of Erebor, now do they?"

"Enough!" the dwarven prince bellowed, and Bilbo cringed. "They will not get a since coin for as long as they threaten us for it!"

Balin leaned in closer towards Fíli. "They say Thranduil is with them," he informed him quietly as not to interfere with Thorin's words, "as well as his people from the Mirkwood. He would have stood a much better chance at parlay, this Bard, descendant of Girion, had he not involved the elves."

This was news. Fíli stilled at the implications. "The elves are with the men from Lake-town?"

"And at our doorstep as we speak," Balin spoke with regret. He glanced at Kíli, who stood a few metres away from them and didn't know whether he was supposed to follow the exchange between Thorin and Bilbo or between Fíli and Balin, but decided quickly when he saw Fíli follow Balin's look. Balin was plainly not comfortable with something. "Have you, er, sealed your courtship with him yet?" he asked.

The unexpected question caught him unawares. Even if this was Balin, and Balin was generally a nice guy who could keep a secret. Fíli responded when he'd pulled himself together. "... Sort of," he admitted, "But not entirely. Halfway there, I guess?" Balin must be drawing his own visual conclusions from that, because he frowned and then blinked when things dawned on him, and eventually he almost looked scandalised. Fíli coughed. "That's a strange question for you to be asking. How does this matter?"

Kíli threw him a wink from where he stood, which meant he had heard it all.

"Well. Good. Good. Could have been better, I suppose, but maybe it'll do. It's just, you see," Balin sympathised, his back towards Kíli, though with what, Fíli had yet to find out. He didn't have to wait long. "She is with the men of Lake-town. The lady of the Mirkwood."

Kíli's smile had slipped off his face.

Tauriel.

Fíli didn't dare look at his brother, afraid of what he would find if he did.

 

*****

 

"Let me in!"

Fíli stared at the wooden frame of the door from the other side. Years of disuse and lichen had turned into a rotten and easily disassembled barrier; one good blow was most likely all it took. The door was more of a formality than a genuine end of the road. A knock loud enough to be a fist banged on the door once again. The frustration behind it made him wince.

"Fíli, you're not being fair! Let me in, I want to see you. Please."

Fíli was afraid. He sat on the bed, his eyes wide; they didn't look at anything in particular. He remembered the Mirkwood. Days that were supposed to be the past and never again the present flashed before him; Kíli, when he first saw Tauriel; Kíli, who never spoke of what happened in the dungeons, and it could well be that the simple truth was that nothing _had_ happened, but his mind played tricks on him and he couldn't stop thinking that it had.

He needed to be alone right now. He needed to come to terms with this new piece of information... and to realise that Kíli may be his for now, but he could be taken from him just as easily.

For two days the coalition of men and elves at their doorstep had not charged, as it was the bargain they were after and not the bloodshed, but their patience was wearing thin. And with Bilbo, cast away from the halls of the mountain after his betrayal, on their side, Thorin's fury did nothing to improve on that situation.

For two days now, Fíli had isolated himself. He did not know how strong Tauriel's influence over Kíli remained, but it had been strong enough before to sway a broken heart. He was so very afraid.

"It's her, isn't it?" Kíli guessed right with sadness lacing his voice. "Please, don't make me stand here and talk to you with the walls and unwanted ears listening in. I will if you make me. Fíli, please. I need to see you. You can't just shut me out like this."

But Fíli couldn't move, nor could he make a sound. It wasn't the other's fault, he wanted to say. He needed time. He'd come to terms with this eventually.

Dwalin would call him a coward, and not be off about it.

"... I love you," Kíli spoke too silently, and too painfully.

Fíli's chest ached when the words reached him. Those weren't words that Kíli should ever have to say to a closed door. He hated himself for this cruelty when he couldn't get up even then to open the door.

From the other side, footsteps started shuffling away from his quarter.

The company stood paused on the brink of war. Smaug was no more, and so easily had they accepted that as the end of their long journey, but how wrong had they been. They were trapped in a mountain that could be surrounded and - poorly defended and poorly stocked, and occupied by only thirteen of them as it was right now - it lay ready for a siege. They might never see another day.

Was it not better, he pleaded with himself, to live today as if there was no tomorrow?

The sound of boots on gravel grew weaker and weaker until it chafed away the last of his common sense.

Fíli pulled himself up to his feet. He rested his head against the damp wood and took a deep breath. The door opened with a creak.

"Come in," he said hoarsely to his past and his present, who stood cloaked in a veil of rejection, but his glassy eyes managed a smile.

If the morrow stole Kíli away from him into the forest, he would have done at least this one thing right.

The morrow brought them to war.


	14. Chapter 14

Thirteen dwarves waited with baited breath.

As if their epic called for heroics, they were given a choice.

They could hole up in the mountain, and await the thinned out floods of goblins and orcs that were no less familiar underground than the dwarves, to pour into the once mighty halls through every crevice, and hope that few enough of their enemies were left for them to remain standing.

They could have chosen to stay within the walls of the dwarven city and its grand polished malachite floors and throne room in restoration. Nobody had asked for their help. They didn't need to do anything.

But as they stood in front of the towering entrance gate in full armour - only thirteen of them to defend the honour of Erebor to the last dwarf standing - their story was about to take a different turn.

Fíli squinted at the sunlight that filtered through the growing gap between the two doors of the main gate when the door slowly opened and the battlefield before them was revealed. Men and elves defended themselves bravely against the onslaught of the vermin of the world, but they were outnumbered and on the losing side. And with the vision came the sound. Metal clanged against metal and flesh. There were so many screams that pierced through marrow that it sounded like butchery instead; and then there were the mad cackles, the eerie laughter of the goblins. He hated that sound most.

He was afraid. Not of the battle. Dwarves were born for the forge and for battle after all, and as was his role as Thorin's heir, Fíli was expected to keep up the morale of his company for as long as he could. If anyone noticed his fear, his job had failed. No, war wasn't what frightened him. The cause for his worry stood next to him. Fíli was afraid of his brother.

Tauriel was in the fray out there, certainly. But even she would be a better alternative than to find his brother not answering his call by the end of the war. He didn't want to, but the very real possibility was etched on his mind that he'd recover him much later under a pile of their dead kin, and pale beyond the living. Sifted through with arrows.

Thorin gave the command, and as one they drew their swords and rushed forward.

Bilbo would be out there somewhere, if the hobbit hadn't done the smart thing and returned to the Shire on time. But Fíli didn't think he had. When he'd been banished from the mountain for having taken the Arkenstone as his fourteenth share - the one gem that was Thorin's, as Azog was the one orc whose death their uncle had staked a claim on for the battle to come - the hurt in his eyes had been so powerful that Fíli couldn't believe that Bilbo wasn't still there, hoping to make amends. But this was no place for a hobbit.

And then there was Gandalf; you couldn't miss him anywhere. His staff occasionally rent through entire crowds, always accompanied by some form of light, or a flash, or fire. He could see it now, as they ran into the last battle for the mountain - in the distance raged a hurricane of lapping tongues of fire. And he knew that that was where they would be safest, Kíli and he; that was where they needed to find their way to.

Twelve goblins fell, and one cut a nasty wound into his leg that he forced himself not to look at because it was easier to deny it when he didn't see it, before Fíli and his brother suddenly found themselves surrounded by members of the woodland party and realised only now how far into the centre of the war they had cut a path for themselves.

A circle of archers drew around them, their backs to them while they fought off one after another.

Fíli grunted. He had meant to make for Gandalf, not the elves. But as he looked around, finally being able to pause without someone trying to swing his head off, Gandalf was nowhere in sight.

A voice like a song ages old spoke.

"Hello, little one."

From the circle, Tauriel turned her head and smiled down upon them both. "It is good to see you again. I am sorry for the circumstances under which we meet."

Kíli inclined his head, almost formally. "The circumstances could have been better. It is still good to see you too, lady of the woods." Fíli felt like a third wheel as they exchanged pleasantries in the middle of warfare. He needed to busy himself, or he'd lose himself to jealousy while he should be concerned for their lives, but every goblin or occasional orc that came too close was felled by elven arrow before coming close enough for his swords. It was frustrating. All the while Kíli and Tauriel would not stop looking at each other, assessing one other, even as other elves fended off an attack to the elven lady and Kíli fired a shot that took down a goblin straight through the left eye without looking.

At last Fíli angrily made up his mind. He stepped in front of Kíli and addressed Tauriel directly. She looked almost ethereal as the light of dawn fractured around her silhouette and she simply smiled at him. "Protect him with your life," he said.

Kíli looked at him oddly when he spoke, like he was only now beginning to understand what Fíli meant to do.

"A challenge from a dwarf," Tauriel smiled with surprise. "In his honour, I will take you up on that."

Fíli stepped out of the circle. It closed immediately after his exit to once again become impregnable. Kíli, realising, rushed forward with a cry. The elves stopped him, even as he tried to claw his way through, desperately trying to get out, but they would not let him. "Fíli!" he called out, "What...? No! Don't leave me here! What are you doing?!"

Fíli looked up at Kíli sadly. "To protect what is most important to me," he spoke, and readied his sword.

Then he turned around and forced his focus solely on the challenge before him, though it pained him to do so. They were out of sight within minutes.

Fíli readjusted his grip on his sword. He looked over his shoulder once, but he could no longer see him. It was for the better, he tried to tell himself. Kíli lived by the bow. He could not let anyone get close. Sure, Kíli was decent with his shortsword. But in the end, it would be his death. Fíli, however... Fíli was born for the close combat. If he couldn't reach out his sword in deadly contact, then there would be no purpose to him. He didn't want to have to do it this way. They had vowed never to lose sight of the other in the battle to come. But that was hours ago, in the confines of Fíli's makeshift room as their limbs tangled and their hands roamed. Here in battle, he knew his place. He knew what he fought for. He also knew that in the elven circle erected around Kíli's person, he would be useless in protecting that which was his.

Once he caught a glimpse. Kíli fired shot after shot at their attackers. Fíli tried not to notice how his eyes glistened and his mouth was pursed in hurt.

Fíli vowed that by the end of the battle, he would see a smile back on that face.

 

*****

 

The Battle of Five Armies. That's what they would call it in the years to come.

As it was, the three armies of dwarves, elves and men were hopelessly losing to the hordes from the North. Volley after volley reached their intended goals, and they thinned out the crowds of goblins and the occasional orc well enough, but more of them kept surging into the battle. It was a matter of numbers - like most wars were - and they were on a hopeless course.

Then came a cry of victory from the Eastern flank; Thorin raised high the bodiless remains of Azog, who defiled the race of Durin no more. Men erupted into cheers all around for the defeat, but to Fíli, who stood knee deep in a pile of dead goblins and was given no respite, it was a victory couldn't afford the luxury to join in on, because it would mean his death.

He cleaved his sword through another goblin before standing face to face with a tall orc on his own. No allies were with him, no one to protect his back. The small circles of elven archers across the battlefield had almost all been broken up. It was everyone on their own. He knew, but he couldn't afford himself to think that Kíli... that the only one he'd ever belong to... No. Not for the small chance that it wasn't so. He had to keep going.

The orc toppled before it could reach him; Glóin grinned broadly at Fíli while he extracted his old and trusty axe and roared, "Keep your head cool, laddie! You have a job to do. Wouldn't want one o' these oversized uglies to survive now."

Fíli laughed back, "It is good to see you, friend." There was little reason for laughter, admitted, but all the more room for relief.

They fought together for a while; two of the three dwarves from their company with more to lose than the mountain alone. And the red-haired dwarf proved a good distraction from his many worries; he loved to count the kills that his axe delivered him. Orcs counted for three. Goblins usually for one. The tiniest, well, he continued to call out merrily, "- and a half!" every time he added another kill to his long and still growing list, as if that particular half one had been a real challenge.

But when they lost each other in the chaos of battle again, Fíli's courage once again sank. Exhausted as he was, he stumbled and went down at an unexpected powerful blow to his shield.

It would not be long now.

That's when the eagles came.

 

*****

 

The last vapours from the mountain that was once a dragon's hoard drifted over the desolate plains. Where before there had been nothing but cold soil, there were now patches over patches of dead bodies.

Thranduil's steed had been lost in the battle a long time ago, but the woodland king himself stood alive and still as statuesque as though little had happened as he stared down at Thorin. Both of them were covered in grime and chunks of goblin that they had bothered trying to rid themselves of during the first hour of the battle, but had stopped soon thereafter. Nor did they speak to each other. Thranduil, it seemed, was just as stubborn to thank any dwarf for coming to their aid, and Thorin simply refused to ask.

Thorin's wounds were deep. He did not give into them; instead he let his eyes go over the desolation of Smaug and, once, his victory over the Pale Orc. His gaze caught on two guards who shouted something that he could not hear. A small figure was recovered from the masses; limp and lifeless at first, but then it stumbled on his own oversized feet and slowly it came back to life.

"You owe someone an apology," Thranduil said.

"In time," Thorin said, though not ungrateful. "Give him time to recover."

"I will remind you of that."

But while everybody sought out their friends and all across the plains came the wails of separated family ties, Fíli didn't hear it. His eyes were large of dissipated adrenalin. He was barely able to stand on his legs and his wounds throbbed. Nowhere. Kíli was nowhere. Every time he scanned the region and did not see his brother, he felt a bit of his hopes slip further away, like something was dying inside of him. Maybe something was.

"Fíli?" Thorin asked as his mindless stroll took him past his uncle, and he felt he was being pulled into a hug. A firm hand patted him on the back. The stench of death overwhelmed him. It was too much for him. "Fíli!" Thorin laughed, "How glad I am to see you alive!"

Fíli pushed him away. "Where is Kíli?" he asked, "Where's he? Where's my brother?"

Thorin stilled next to him. "He's not...?" he started.

Whereas Fíli was a quiet searcher, almost resigned to the fate he had dreaded since their march from the gates, Thorin knew fewer boundaries when it came to his kin. He shouted out Kíli's name to wherever the wind would carry his voice. Others who had just lost someone stared at them with sympathy. There was no response.

In the end his knees could carry him no further. Fíli sank to the ground. His sword dropped to the floor next to him, and his shield slipped off his arm like it was his lifeline to the world. "He's gone," he whispered, and he buried his head in his hands. It could not be. It simply wasn't possible. Hadn't they promised? Hadn't they vowed to stay alive for each other?

Thranduil approached as silent as the drift of a leaf.

"I wish to talk to you of debts the debts of your and my people, king under the mountain," he spoke to Thorin. Fíli didn't want to hear about debts. He didn't want to hear about anything other than the one who held his heart.

He hadn't been there to protect him, and he hated himself for it.

"How dare you?" Thorin growled in perfect synchronisation with Fíli's feelings. He stood ready to lash out at the elven king. Fíli was grateful for that, at least. He didn't think he could stand another political discussion right now. Kíli was gone from him.

Unfortunately the war had not made them friends, and thus Thranduil heeded none the dwarf's words and continued to speak while he peered into the distance, at one spot in particular. "About the debts of my people to yours, Thorin Oakenshield. I would ask you to consider them repaid." There was a smile on his face, but it was a sad one. Fíli had never seen him sad before. He didn't understand. Confused, he followed his gaze.

There, in the distance, sat Tauriel. A shield was strapped to her back, and her many wounds were visible from afar. He bow was laid down in front of her. She looked peaceful there. Asleep. It took a lot longer before Fíli realised that she was not asleep, and that her wounds took their toll with every passing minute, her breathing racking her frame at every gasp. He got up.

First he only stumbled, but soon Fíli ran. Tauriel knew. He needed to know. For as long as she was alive, she held answers; she had been his protector. She knew where to find Kíli.

"Little one," she smiled a bloody smile when he fell down in front of her.

"Where is he?"

It hurt her to even breathe. "Help me," she whispered, "My life is not yet forfeit, but I fear a long dream will claim me soon."

Fíli cursed inwardly. Helping her was the last thing on his mind. All he wanted was to know where Kíli lay. Only then would he get closure. But if his brother was truly gone from him, and she was alive but she didn't know, he owed it to the living to at least heed her request.

"What can I do?"

Tauriel smiled. Fatigue wore her down though, Fíli noticed. He took pity. "Relieve me of your challenge, little one. Only then will my sleep be peaceful."

Tears sprang to his eyes. That was it, then. There was his answer. "You're relieved," he spoke. "Thank you. Thank you for protecting him."

"It was my pleasure," she smiled, before she gave into the deep sleep and her body slackened. Thranduil crouched down next to her and looked down, his gaze empty. She slept. Then Fíli felt something give way - like a powerful enchantment he did not know she had kept up until it slipped from her.

From the dead behind him came a loud gasp and a cry of anguish.

He stilled.

Then, two metres down the hill, a pile stirred and the cry became one of utter fear. It was so intense and it kept ringing, screaming out, that he couldn't bear a second more of it. He rushed to the source. Someone was down there, buried under layers of goblins. This was madness, he realised. Any moment now, he expected someone to pull him away from the heap and try to get him to his senses. Fíli was going insane.

Maybe that was why he couldn't understand when Thorin was suddenly by his side, helping to remove the hideous goblin bodies to get deeper, or how Thranduil looked down at them with a curiosity that was not at all concern for their well-being. Whoever was below - _if_ someone was still alive down there - they were suffocating.

A hand grasped through the masses from below. Thorin grabbed it and pulled on it with all his might, careful not to dislocate anything but not in any other way giving in. He got to his feet to better support himself.

"The sleep of the river," Thranduil said, amazed. He looked at Tauriel with surprise.

"What?" Fíli asked him, not understanding and, quite frankly, confused about why Thranduil was even talking to them when they were trying to save a man's life.

Thranduil's eyes bore into him. "It is a great debt, indeed."

When he looked back, someone heaved against Thorin's frame to regain his strength, coughing when his body couldn't handle it.

He knew him.

The bodies piled up above him may have deformed his voice at first, and the telltale signs of battle may have rendered him almost unrecognisable if he looked at him from where he sat now - his hair an indecipherable tangle of branches and gore, half of his coat cut off and none of his weaponry still on him. But Fíli knew that smile when the figure turned around.

"You live," Kíli whispered, out of breath, and flung himself from Thorin straight against Fíli. He pressed their lips together in the most desperate kiss there ever was. "You _live_."

The dark pulled away from his heart at once.

Fíli couldn't still quite believe it.

Tentatively he lifted his hands and lowered them to fist themselves into the remains of Kíli's coat. But he couldn't deny how Kíli's voice laughed and pulled him closer, nor how he had been holding his breath until he gasped and pulled away for breath, only to realise he needed the kiss so much he was going to go insane without it.

Then it hit home, and he pulled him tighter against him until he was sure Kíli couldn't breathe. He didn't care. He lived.

Kíli cupped his face and looked at him.

He saw his world reflected in them. His past, his present, and for ever more his tomorrow.

Fíli pulled him back with raw necessity.

"Oh," Thranduil's voice floated over them casually, and he looked to his side to where Balin and Dwalin, having been pulled in by the noise, smiled proudly at the two and where Thorin instead could only gape. "A great debt, indeed. What would you say, oh king under the mountain?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends a story that kept me with the writing jitters and inappropriate thoughts at ill timings for over a month. Thanks, everyone who read it and supported me with great comments. You've really made me even more eager to push for updates. I've been spending all of last week (which was a holiday in the mountains... fitting, if not for the sad lack of internet) writing, so these last three chapters may be a bit 'whoa, where did that come from?!". Sorry about that.
> 
> Again, thanks for reading Songs For The Road. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.


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